Energetic clouds of red thread spring from boats on land and fill the space. A dense network of black wires encloses charred chairs and a piano in abstract smoke. Visions of meditative delight or fear, these two spectacular installations are at the heart of the journey of Chiharu Shiota's work, over nearly thirty years, presented at the Grand Palais, in Paris, in preview of the reopening of its galleries.
Over a few hundred kilometers of wires deployed in the air, this semi-retrospective of the Japanese artist, organized by the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo – it is the largest exhibition ever devoted to the artist in today, on an international tour −, oscillates between dark phases and more optimistic phases, where the “tremblings of the soul” − “The Soul Trembles” is its title − appear as the common thread of a work focused on connection and emotion.
Chronological, the exhibition looks back on the artist's training period, in the 1990s, based on photographic archives, videos and watercolors. As a painting student in Kyoto, the artist quickly encountered a feeling of frustration with painting: “I felt stuck, I felt like everything I was creating had already been done”she summarizes. During a study trip to Canberra, Australia, after a dream in which she had become a painting questioning herself from inside a canvas, she performed a pivotal performance: she covered herself in red paint while 'rolling up into a web, in a visceral, almost horrifying vision. This act of bodily expression is a liberation.
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