Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.

Berlin – Chiharu Shiota: “Uncertain Journey” at Blain Southern through November 12th, 2016

Monday, October 31st, 2016

Chiharu Shiota’s Uncertain Journey (Installation View)
Chiharu Shiota’s Uncertain Journey (Installation View)

Chiharu Shiota’s Uncertain Journey, on view at Blain|Southern Berlin through the 12th of November, is an awe-inspiring meditation on memory, fate, and belonging.  Evocative and beautiful, this installation fills the gallery’s main atrium with a swarming mass of red yarn that creeps up the walls and envelops the viewer in a network of red.  Entering into the space, one is swept up in a ghostly web that spreads between the forms of skeletal boats.  Shiota is known for her immersive installations, such as The Key in the Hand (2015), in which she creates new visual planes as if she were painting in mid-air.  The artist has created this site-specific installation in Berlin eight years after she last exhibited in her home city, reprising a body of work that earned her impressive attention at last year’s Venice Biennale. (more…)

Florence – Francis Bacon: “Francis Bacon and the Existential Condition in Contemporary Art,” Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, through January 27th, 2013

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012


Annegret Soltau (b. 1946), NY Faces, chirurgische Operationen, 2001-2002, 51 x 51 cm, photo restitching, © Annegret Soltau

A series of paintings by Francis Bacon curated into dialogue with 5 internationally-acclaimed contemporary artists (Swedish Nathalie Djurberg, Romanian Adrian Ghenie, Italian Arcangelo Sassolino, Japanese Chiharu Shiota, and German Annegret Soltau) opened at the Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina (CCCS) in Florence, Italy on October 5th, 2012 and will remain on view until the end of January 2013.

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Go See: London – ‘WALKING IN MY MIND’ at the Hayward Gallery, through September 6, 2009

Thursday, July 30th, 2009


“Extremities (smooth, smooth),” Pipilotti Rist’s contribution to “Walking in My Mind,” the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

Currently showing at the Hayward Gallery are the minds of ten artists — or, at least, how the artists feel they can represent the melding of product and creative process.  Ten installation artists from around the world are featured in the show.  Some are relative newcomers who are showing new pieces at the Hayward, like Swedish Bo Christian Larsson and Japanese Chiharu Shiota, who exhibit for the first time in London, and Dutch artist Mark Manders, who shows for the first time in a major British exhibition. Others are more well-established, including Yayoi Kusama and Turner prize-winner Keith Tyson, as well as the late controversial American artist Jason Rhoades.  Also exhibiting are Charles Avery (UK), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), and Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland).

Related links:
Hayward Gallery: Walking in My Mind
Art Review: Walking in My Mind Hayward Gallery, London SE1 [The Observer]
Thoughts go astray at the Hayward Gallery’s Walking in My Mind show [The Guardian]
Dark delights from the lonely mind of Japanese genius Yoshitomo Nara [The Independent]


Yoshitomo Nara in “Walking in My Mind.” Via The Guardian.

more pictures and story after the jump…

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