"Stairway", from Chiharu Shiota's official website.
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota will have an exhibition at Pittsburgh's Mattress Factory satellite gallery on Sampsonia Way from September 12 through July 31, 2014. The museum's website summarizes Shiota and "Traces of Memory":
Central to the artist’s work are the themes of remembrance and oblivion, dreaming and sleeping, traces of the past and childhood and dealing with anxiety. Shiota explores the relationship between waking life and memories through hauntingly beautiful installations that incorporate everyday objects like shoes, pianos and hospital beds encased in webs of yarn. Stretched in multi-layers in a gallery space, Shiota weaves disorienting cocoons of black yarn that reflect the artist’s desire to ‘draw in the air’.Pop City adds more:
The site-specific installation of new works by Shiota will fill the eight rooms in the building at 516 Sampsonia Way—a 19th-century row home with a storied past—which is suited to the artist’s work. Its interior is cosmetically untouched; the raw condition of the building lends itself well to reflections on the past and the conjuring of memories.
Shiota, who has worked out of Berlin since 1996, came to Pittsburgh at the beginning of August and has been covering the interior of the building with more than a million feet of yarn.The opening reception is on the 12th from 7 to 9 pm. The new gallery is located at 516 Sampsonia Way (map), a few houses down from the museum's main building and down the street from the City of Asylum.
“She’d never had that big of a space to work with before,” Vanim says. “It’s nice to work in a space that has a little more character and a little more history to it. She’s used to working with plain, white gallery space.”