Past Exhibition

*Reservation is required to visit the exhibitions.

The Shiseido Gallery will hold successive solo exhibitions from Friday, October 2 to Sunday, December 20, 2020 to celebrate the work of the three artists selected through the 14th shiseido art egg open program. These were initially planned in spring but postponed due to the spread of COVID-19.
As the new normal becomes part of our daily life across the globe, not only the lifestyle, but also the environment surrounding art and culture is undergoing major changes. While there are restrictions on venues and methods to present artworks, the importance of art in a time like this is widely acknowledged.
This year again, through the shiseido art egg, the Shiseido Gallery, which has been introducing contemporary artists for over 100 years, will provide fresh and promising artists with a place of expression, a space where their creativity can be experienced. The works, created by artists who face modern society with sincerity in this age of uncertainty and instability, will bring new understanding to gallery visitors. We hope that this exhibition will be helpful in creating a better world.

The Shiseido Gallery will hold successive solo exhibitions to celebrate the work of the three artists selected through the 14th shiseido art egg open program from Friday, October 2 to Sunday, December 20, 2020.

The 14th shiseido art egg program received 215 applications from all over Japan. From several creative proposals that take advantage of the gallery's space, artists Taishi Nishi, Akiko Hashimoto, and Claire Fujita were selected, owing to their unique perspectives and their expression of new values and aesthetics in today's world.

Shiseido set a corporate mission: “BEAUTY INNOVATIONS FOR A BETTER WORLD.” This mission is governed by the notion that beautiful encounters and experiences through art may guide our lifestyle and manner of thinking in our increasingly uncertain world and, if only a small part of our everyday life, lead to innovations that change our actions, which will make the world better and more beautiful.

Since its opening in 1919, the Shiseido Gallery has been providing beautiful encounters and experiences through art under the ideal of “discovering and creating new value.” The open program was launched in 2006 to support the discovery and creation of new value by fresh and promising artists. The selected artists are provided the opportunity to organize their exhibitions in collaboration with curators, similar to the regular exhibitions held at the Shiseido Gallery.

This year's jury for the shiseido art egg prize is comprised of three creative professionals from different genres––artist Shunsuke Imai, poet Sayaka Osaki, and journalist and 21_21 DESIGN SIGHT Associate Director Noriko Kawakami.
* The shiseido art egg prize is conferred to artwork among the exhibitions of the three selected artists that challenges Shiseido Gallery’s distinctive space and creates maximum new values. The winner will be announced after the exhibitions on the Shiseido Gallery website.
 

Nishi’s work operates under the themes of the borders between fiction and reality and anonymity. He explores the mutual relationships between images and materiality through three-dimensional artworks comprised of paintings and china clay. Nishi’s pursuit of reality is facilitated by his restructuring of the world’s overflowing information, into which he weaves his own experiences and memories. His attempt at comparing paintings and the real world will present a new scenery to the viewers.

I am delighted to finally hold the shiseido art egg exhibition which was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The situation is still uncertain in Japan and around the world, but I will do my best to hold my exhibition safely during this time. I have been thinking that the way we view things might be different before and after the coronavirus. As I see the crowd of mask-wearing people outside every day, I feel as if various events we thought were unrealistic are becoming real and are shared by people around the world.

Hashimoto places monochrome pencil drawings in the ordinary world to distill another landscape that exists in the space.
Selecting motifs such as plants, glasses, and birds, the fine details of her drawings echoes with the white walls of the gallery, evoking light, time and presence.
The viewers will find themselves moving between the reality and the tranquil space created by Hashimoto.

Seasons have passed by quickly since spring, and the environment surrounding the exhibition has changed. Today's situation still seems volatile. I am grateful that I have an opportunity to present my works despite these circumstances. In the past few months, I had time to rethink the exhibition through words related to this exhibition such as, "visiting a place" and, "looking into the far distance here." I am looking forward to realizing my works in that space with large white walls we find beyond those stairs to the underground.
I hope you will notice what is happening at the venue during the exhibition.

Fujita focuses on transformations of communication as well as differences and borders that exists. She reexamines human relationships and expresses the energy, rhythm, distance, time, and history embedded within them by combining different materials and using movement and sound. Her works will make the viewers experience the invisible connection and recall human instinct memories.

While I was staying at home, I had many small realizations. One of them is that, while I have been searching for "how to make two things physically close to each other" in my past works, the world today focuses on "how to connect to each other while maintaining physical distance." As I witnessed this, I returned to my starting point and began to focus on what "connection" truly means and what kind of structure it has. It is inconvenient to have unprecedented restrictions when creating works, but I also realized that it is both necessary and possible that we change along with the environment. I hope you will see and feel my notion of "connection" at the exhibition. I am looking forward to meeting you.

The Gallery Talk, in which the artists discuss their artworks at the venue, will be streamed online on the Shiseido Gallery website after each exhibition starts.