ART-PRESENTATION: Chiharu Shiota-Destination

Chiharu Shiota belongs to a generation of young artists who have gained international attention in recent years for body-related art. Her education at German art schools with Marina Abramovic from 1996 provides a key to her pictorial language that is unmistakably oriented around the artistic solutions of the performance and installation art of the ‘70s.

By Dimitris Lempesis

“Destination” the solo exhibition of Chiharu Shiota occupies both Galerie Daniel Templon’s spaces with site-specific installation and a series of new sculptures. A huge 5-metre boat, the frame of its hull resembling a human skeleton, floats in a sea of red yarn. It is mirrored by a smaller 3.5 metre boat on the ground. Following on from the environment they create is a diptych of paintings, the “Skins”, depicting ambiguous representations of the body, its surface, its networks of connections. A series of red yarn sculptures ensnaring various objects, such as a dress and a weapon, completes an ensemble that raises the metaphysical questions that face us as humans, the difficulty we have understanding the world, and the complex relations that link us. For the use of boats in her installation Chiharu Shiota says “I have been using boats since my exhibition at the Japan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015; I wanted to create one oversized boat representing the topics I have touched on in my most recent works. Ships carry people and time. They feature a defined direction, with no other choice but to keep moving forward. Though we may not know where we are heading, we can never stop. Life is a journey of uncertainty and wonder, and the boats symbolize the bearers of our dreams and hopes”. Chiharu Shiota’s desire to question the identity of the artistic subject as well as the significance of the autonomous artwork itself is taken to its logical conclusion: if every representation of the body depicts an empty space that cannot be suffused with authenticity or identity, then the presence of the performer also can only function as an image. The relationship between the artistic subject and the artwork, between the observer and the performer, between inside and outside remains in constant flux, and every element of the installation , even the observers themselves, acknowledging their dependence, their entanglement in the space created by the artist – is an integral part of the artistic expression and its perception as well.

Info: Galerie Daniel Templon, 30 rue Beaubourg, Paris, Duration: 20/5-22/7/17, Days & HoursL Mon-Sat 10:00-19:00, http://danieltemplon.com