Following Chiharu Shiota’s much celebrated exhibition The Key in the Hand at the Japanese Pavilion earlier this year at the Venice Biennale, Patricia Low Contemporary and curator Olivier Varenne are proud to present Rain of Memories in Gstaad. This exhibition is held to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the gallery, which opened in 2005 with an exhibition of Katherina Sieverding.

Alongside her sculptures of objects enclosed in grid like structures, embroidered paintings and works on paper, Shiota has created a new on-site installation. Rain of Memories is a web of memories complexly weaved with red thread and intersected with hanging keys. The keys themselves, collected from people all around the world, are the objects through which we gain access into every day moments, where all kinds of experiences, and even secrets, have been passed from person to person. The installation is haunting yet delicate and poetic; as we enter, we are faced with an inescapable mass of emotion, pouring down from the ceiling in raining red thread.

Shiota is quickly becoming well known for her ability to immerse her audience within frozen moments of Time. For the artist, weaving the thread is a form of meditation and is symbolic of her own mind set. When troubled, the thread tangles more irregularly; it becomes hard to establish where memories begin and end, but when they are balanced, the weavings become more regular and follow more distinct patterns. It is impossible not to feel the overwhelming presence of the artist within her work, and it is to the credit of Shiota’s sensibility that each and every viewer can experience this so personally.