Shiseido Gallery is delighted to present Tsubaki-kai 8: “This New World” from Saturday 5 June to Sunday 29 August 2021.
The “Tsubaki-kai” is a group show launched in 1947 with the reopening of the Shiseido Gallery following the wartime suspension of its activities. Named after the camellia (tsubaki) of the Shiseido symbol mark, and grounded in the belief that art has the capacity to offer hope and courage, Tsubaki-kai exhibitions have been staged even at times of post-war restriction, disaster and recession, out of a desire to help the world flourish once more. Serving as the main exhibition of the Shiseido Gallery for over 70 years now, and featuring a different lineup of artists in every era, to date the Tsubaki-kai has showcased the work of a total of 86 talented art practitioners.
This year will see the start of a new Tsubaki-kai, the eighth, consisting of work by Hiroshi Sugito, Ryuji Nakamura, Nerhol, Futoshi Miyagi, Aiko Miyanaga, and [mé]. Their cross-genre activities and collaborations, and team-based production, make all these artists especially representative of their era. Here at Shiseido Gallery, over the next three years to 2023 we will join them to ponder the possibilities and challenges of a post-corona “new world.” 2021 will be designated the year of “Impetus,” 2022 that of “Quest,” and 2023 of “Culmination,” with the participating artists identifying new questions as they follow the processes involved in addressing these three themes, over time delving increasingly deeper into those questions, and their respective responses.
This year, on the theme of “Impetus,” the artists make selection from the art collected by Shiseido at previous Tsubaki-kai exhibitions works that spark ideas around this “new world.” By presenting what they have chosen from the collection, and their personal responses to it, via their own works and methods, they will attempt to bring new perspectives to the collection works, and create links between these, and the future. In 2022, the artists will work with each other and engage with experts in other fields in a “Quest” to explore questions and realizations from the first year, and present works arising from these interactions. The final year, 2023, will consist of an exhibition representing the “Culmination” of three years’ activity.
A dedicated page will be set up for Tsubaki-kai 8 on the Shiseido Gallery website. This will be used to post information unable to be covered at exhibitions, as well as processes, documents and so on, all in the interest of facilitating communication with visitors to the exhibitions and the website.
The world in which we live is now at a major turning point. In uncertain, unpredictable times, art can give us courage, and hints of what the future might hold. At Shiseido Gallery we aim to make the Tsubaki-kai an open, welcoming place where artists and the viewing public can come together, and through dialogue share new values, and influence and inspire each other.