The Network (Capsule Review)

<p>That was my first thought when entering&nbsp;<a href="https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2023/hammer-projects-chiharu-shiota" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank"><em>The Network</em></a>, a voluminous installation by Japanese multimedia artist Chiharu Shiota. For decades her main material has been thread, at times interwoven with found objects like keys, suitcases, or even a charred piano. Her palette is unwavering: black, white, or red string.&nbsp;<em>The Network</em>&rsquo;s crimson hue against the Hammer Museum&rsquo;s white walls was immediately evocative of blood and vasculature.</p> <p>Shiota has long explored ephemeral states such as memory, dreams, and emotions. Through density and its absence, she weaves a tangible, indescribable universality out of these intangible, personal processes. The result is all visceral response. Although thoughts come in &mdash; like the thicket of veins &mdash; they wash over and recede like a tide. What remains is a total, base sensation of intense physicality. It&rsquo;s like smelling a forgotten scent from childhood; an instant, hallucinatory flashback of feeling without any cognitive effort, a complete bypass of thinking.</p> <p>A site-specific sculpture created for, around, and through the lobby&rsquo;s shapes, it is Kafkaesque and unlike anything commonly encountered inside a building. Ripe with tension, it&rsquo;s a comforting cocoon and a nightmarish suffocation. On the heels of the popular video game and subsequent TV series&nbsp;<em>The Last of Us</em>, the threads are reminiscent of creeping fungal growth. It&rsquo;s a transformational, transportive environment. With other art that can mean being transported away or sometimes it&rsquo;s being transported within.&nbsp;<em>The Network</em>&nbsp;does both.</p> <p><a href="https://noproscenium.com/the-network-capsule-review-ae4a69509d75"><strong>Read More</strong></a></p>
Tags: Capsule Review