Artsy: Chiharu Shiota part of 8 Artists Who’ve Had Breakout Moments at Auction This Summer

Chiharu Shiota, State of Being, 2016. Courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd.

Turning to the under-50-year-old record-breakers at the sales, the most frequently sold in recent years has been Japanese installation artist Chiharu Shiota, with 31 sculptures sold at auction since 2013. Shiota is also a performance artist with links to Marina Abramović and has a Venice Biennale national pavilion show (Japan in 2015) under her belt. She is represented by Berlin’s König Galerie and Galerie Templon in Paris.

Shiota’s installations typically employ thread like a spider’s web wrapping up everyday objects such as shoes and dresses. She clearly has admirers in Asia, too, as her previous record of $243,000 was set at Phillips in Hong Kong. That was about four times the estimate. Last week, Christie’s offered her largest work for sale on the secondary market yet, State of Being (2016), a large rectangular frame on a plinth containing over 5,000 keys wrapped in skeins of red thread. The work was so large that Christie’s could not get it into its showrooms for the preview. It also carried her highest estimate yet, at £100,000 to £150,000 ($137,000–$206,000). Neither deterred bidders, however, and it sold for £287,500 ($396,000) to an Asian bidder (not Japanese, I was assured).

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