Installation view of “Echoes Between” at Templon Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
In the past year alone, Chiharu Shiota has staged exhibitions in several countries around the world, including Austria, China, Hong Kong, Italy, and Turkey. But even as 2025 wraps up, the Japanese artist is showing no signs of slowing down. Now, Shiota’s innovative, web-like work has landed in New York for her second-ever solo show in the city.
Open at Templon Gallery in Chelsea, Echoes Between is more of an experience than an exhibition. For those familiar with Shiota’s practice, this shouldn’t be that surprising, given her preference for monumental installations that invite immersion rather than distance. The show includes two such artworks, both delving into the liminal realm of consciousness.
The eponymous Echoes Between submerges two chairs beneath a cloud of glowing threads, cascading down like soft rain. At some points in the installation, these threads part slightly, as if offering reprieve from the luminescent shower that, though magical, seems almost endless. The piece, as with much of Shiota’s work, is hypnotic, guiding its viewers through its dream-like atmosphere and into a space in which our minds may wander, transform, and gain new insight. That experience, as Shiota suggests, is not unlike that of dying, a theme that she often explores throughout her art.
If its title is any indication, The Soul’s Journey is a similar meditation upon the mind, memory, and their eventual dissolution. This sculpture spreads across the entire room, soaking up the walls with a tangle of red threads. Several threads are also stretched from the ceiling toward the installation’s heart, seemingly recalling the shape of wings. At the base is what appears to be a woven claw, further strengthening the resemblance to a hovering bird. The result is a somewhat menacing silhouette, but Shiota successfully softens it thanks to the thread’s delicacy. That tension is precisely what defines the artist’s work, which is often suspended between the real and the imaginary.
Aside from these sculptures, Echoes Between features mixed-media canvases. Endless Line (2024), for one, presents a criss-crossing network of red thread, while Endless Line (2025) looks like a white cocoon set against a black background. Inside Memory, on the other hand, is essentially a small-scale sculpture inside a box. Here, Shiota has woven thread into honeycomb patterns, draping them across the white frame that contains it, almost like an ecosystem in miniature.
“My work is about connection. I believe we are all connected, and it’s impossible to be part of society without those connections,” Shiota told My Modern Met in a recent interview. “The web of threads reminds me of the brain and the neural system, filled with memories and our existence.”
Chiharu Shiota: Echoes Between is now on view at Templon Gallery through January 22, 2026.
In her second-ever solo show in New York, Chiharu Shiota proves that thread is the most versatile way to explore consciousness.
Installation view of “Echoes Between” at Templon Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
Installation view of “Echoes Between” at Templon Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
“Inside Memory,” 2025. Mixed media. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
“Endless Line,” 2025. Thread on canvas. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
Chiharu Shiota: Echoes Between is now on view at Templon Gallery in New York through January 22, 2026.
“Endless Line,” 2024. Thread on canvas. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
Installation view of “Echoes Between” at Templon Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
“Connected to the Universe,” 2025. Water-soluble wax pastel, ink, and thread on paper. (Photo: Charles Roussel)
Installation view of “Echoes Between” at Templon Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo: Charles Roussel)