Life Scroll
A solo Show by Kentaro Chiba
26 September - 18th October 2020
Opening: Saturday, 26th September 6-8:00 pm
Address:
c/o Alchimia - Open Space for Arts
Via dei Priori, 77
Perugia 06123
ALESSANDRO BERNI GALLERY is pleased to announce Life Scroll a solo exhibition by
Japanese artist Kentaro Chiba who for the first time exhibits in Perugia.
Life Scroll is a highly detailed and sustained drawing in pen on paper which continues
as a daily discipline. The drawing started in 1991 and is now 19 meters long.
To release the scroll from linguistic definitions and a narrow range of classification, Chiba has intentionally opted for automatic drawing, creating a space loaded with contradiction; not least, by consciously contrasting Western perspective expression and mirrored projection (using water surfaces), with Eastern contra-perspective, isometric projection methods and the birds-eye view. From the beginning, he has been interested in the idea of the distant view, which can suggest the absence of a viewer or an invisible viewer in the distance. For Chiba, distant and anonymous vision, without evidence of a viewer, suggests a kind of visual purity. Over 27 years of accumulated daily drawing has made the scroll a more neutral than personal expression.
Life Scroll consists of numerous fragments, aspects of the artist, which are transient and
ephemeral. On the other hand, Life Scroll can be considered as a stream of consciousness. Chiba believes that a scroll, in terms of format, can mirror the depths of the subconscious (Alaya, in Sanskrit) where the border between individuals and the rules of linguistic division are supposed to vanish.
Chiba believes that to emphasize only time passing is wrong. In the scroll, time and space
seem to flow but at the same time, to be synchronic as an aggregation of numerous moments. As such, time becomes ambiguous.
The scroll suggests narrativity (and so, time) over a long span of years but can also be
considered, away from linguistic assertions, a panorama on a distant horizon.
Kentaro Chiba was born in Tokyo in 1953. He received his BA in Fine Arts from the National University of Yokohama, Japan 1978 and his MA in Fine Arts from Nottingham
Trent University, UK. In 1998 and 1999 he studied at Central St. Martins Art College UK as a guest student. Kentaro Chiba has exhibited since 1986. He lives and works in Fujisawa, Japan. Important awards and participation: 1992, Artex Tokyo (Golden Prize); 1994 Osaka Triennal (special award) 1999, Liverpool Biennale, United Kingdom. 2017, Artifact Gallery, New York City; 2018 The SIlent Witness, Onishi Gallery New York City; 2018 The Silent Witness, Camden Image Gallery, The Silent Witness, 2018, Life Scroll, 2019 only exhibition MyMicroGallery, Milan.