For the event commemorating the third anniversary of the Tokyo Ginza Shiseido Building, Minako Nishiyama will draw directly on the white walls of the Shiseido Gallery in front of the audience.* During the month of March, her work will come into bud and bloom on the white walls, the process of which visitors are invited to witness for themselves. On this occasion, Shiseido Gallery will depart from the idea of exhibiting completed works and bring to light the results of a simple, yet experimental encounter between an artist and a vacant space. Shiseido Gallery hopes to recognize and appreciate anew the fundamental elements by which it is structured, and the relationship between those elements: the artist, work, space and viewer.

Minako Nishiyama, born in 1965, has participated in numerous group shows including "De-Genderism" (1997, Setagata Art Museum), the international traveling exhibition "Let's Entertain" (2000, Walker Art Center, Pompidou Center, etc.), "Promenade in Asia－CUTE" (2001, Art Tower Mito, Contemporary Art Gallery) as well as solo shows such as "Pink♥PiNk♥PinK" (Otani Memorial Art Museum, Nishinomiya City). She has constantly pursued the color pink in her works, presenting a variety of installation works that draw their inspiration from Takarazuka Revue performances and girls' comic books. At present, her focus is on wall drawings. Last autumn, she participated in the Artist-in-Residence program at Banff, Canada, where she attempted an experimental wall drawing session, making the most of her limited time at the residence.
For Nishiyama, the wall that stands in front of her is not a mere canvas, but that which she defines as "something breathing, like a skin or membrane." Nishiyama will continue to draw and erase on this animate surface and explore what lies beyond it. The images that arise from this vacant space will grow and extend beyond the walls, covering spaces such as the balcony railings and elevator doors, as if they are liberated from gravity. Nishiyama's drawing will emerge before our eyes somewhat like the way nature promises us that flowers bloom with the advent of spring. The lines and colors that are drawn by her brush however, are unknown to us, again, like the way we do not know how those flowers blossom before us.
In conjunction with the live drawing inside the Shiseido Gallery, Nishiyama's three-dimensional works made from sugar will be displayed inside the first-floor Plaza windows, and the Shiseido Parlour (4th and 5th floors) and Faro Shiseido (11th floor). Viewers will see that the crowns and roses she makes from sugar echo the sweet and ephemeral world she expresses in her two-dimensional wall works. Visitors are invited to encounter the rich oeuvre of Minako Nishiyama inside the Tokyo Ginza Shiseido Building.

*The drawing process is scheduled to end during the first two weeks. Visitors will be able to see the finished drawing during the latter two weeks. For more information, contact the Shiseido Gallery.