Sho Shibuya’s series presented in Mondo Reale is titled HEADLINES: 2020–2022, and is a selection of works from the series Sunrise from a Small Window and Events, that Shibuya started in 2020 during the spread of COVID pandemic. A daily meditation on the contrast between the steady morning sky and the increasingly chaotic news, the series is a visual and emotional interpretation of the front page of The New York Times, and a visual record of each day’s natural beauty propped against significant events from the news day. The real world is absorbed in his paintings: the sky embodies a timeline and reveals the passing of time, becoming a sort of visual diary of our times. The newspaper is the place where artistic creation takes place, questioning the essence of reality and what it is made of, through a sensitive and poetic approach of the world.
As the timekeeper of the Mondo Reale, Sho Shibuya also contributes with a digital project for the whole exhibition period: Brooklyn’s sky as seen from his window is painted on the daily edition of the New York Times and made into a digital image, that then travels all the way to the Triennale Milano to be presented as a 53rd work in the exhibition space and on social media.
Last but not least, his tentacular presence in Mondo Reale also manifest in the creation of an object, specifically a mirror: in response to the feelings emerging from Mondo Reale and its works, Shibuya focuses on the idea of reflection and distortion, presenting a blurred line between what is real, what is imagined, and what lies between. As Shibuya says, “each artwork exists in dialogue with the real world, with the shared experience of humanity and our situation, but each dialogue is also dynamic and distorted by the artists’ own experience, and further by the viewer’s own personal story. No experience with a piece is completely the same; each of us brings our self to the experience.”