Chiharu Shiota | Templon

©Art Basel 2013/Unlimited/Chiharu Shiota/Templon MCH Messe Schweiz (Basel) AG

Just three weeks after its inaugural edition in Hong Kong, the entire art world looks to Switzerland, where the Art Basel 2013 opens to the public. For many, the show in Basel represents the most important marketplace for modern and contemporary art and its sheer size suggests that it certainly plays the part. Divided in individual sectors, every artistic medium is represented: painting, photography, prints, sculpture, installations, mixed media, video and performance – The Art Basel has it all.

This year’s 44th edition of the show certainly proves its status as the biggest player in the industry. 306 galleries from 39 countries are exhibiting the work of over 6000 artists, among them big players like Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz or Picasso.

Of all the pictures that have surfaced so far from this years Art Basel preview, one work seems particularly mesmerizing: The installation entitled “In Silence” by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. A large burnt piano, charred and blackened, stands in the center of this installation, surrounded by a row of chairs and completely engulfed in a web of black strings. “In Silence” seems eerie and poetic at the same time, the black strings looking like giant cobwebs, interconnecting the piano and chairs in a dream like scene.

Shiota, who currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany, was born in 1972 in Osaka and received her artistic education at German art schools in Berlin, Braunschweig and Hamburg. Shiota is represented by Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris, France.