Since it opened in 1919, the Shiseido Gallery has consistently promoted an agenda of corporate ideals that includes “the discovery and creation of new value.”

The “shiseido art egg” is a series of public exhibitions that open the doors of the gallery to offer up-and-coming new artists opportunities to show their work, an effort that marks a return to the company’s original “mecenat” efforts (activities supporting art and culture).

For this year’s shiseido art egg 5, the Shiseido Gallery received 261 applications from all over Japan. This time a stunning number of applicants in their twenties was noticeable, as well as topics from a wide range with deeply interesting exhibition plans. Choosing just three applicants was a difficult task for the selection committee^*. After considerable deliberation, the Gallery is pleased to welcome three talented new artists—Ryo Fujimoto, Ryosuke Imamura, and Naho Kawabe—whose work offered a new expression and creation capable of placing them at the forefront of a next generation of artists while their exhibition plans are fitting the galleries space well. These three will be exhibiting in solo shows in the Shiseido Gallery according to the schedule below. We hope you enjoy the three different worlds of artistic expression presented by these three artists.

Following the completion of these solo exhibitions, a three-member committee will select one of these artists to receive the “Shiseido art egg prize.” This year’s judges are Kengo Kuma (architect/ professor of Tokyo University), Tatsuo Miyajima (contemporary artist/ professor and vice president of Tohoku University of Art and Design), and Miwa Yanagi (contemporary artist). The winner will be announced in late April 2011 on the Shiseido Gallery website. Please access for the results.
* Comprised of Shiseido Gallery advisors Aomi Okabe (professor at Musashino Art University) and Tsutomu Mizusawa (vice-curator and planning chief at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama), as well as members of the Shiseido Corporate Culture Department.

■Ryo Fujimoto exhibition
January 7th (FRI) until January 30th (SUN) 2011
Ryo Fujimoto is not an artist who intends to “take a photograph”, but aims for “acquiring an image”, using as well photographs and the camera. He produces photographic works, picturing people and landscapes with an original technique, which invites the spectator to a world of a different dimension exceeding time and space. In his exhibition, he tries to exhibit the work as a device, rousing the imagination of the spectator, and manages to float not only the printing paper with the image that appears on it, but also the entire Shiseido Gallery.
1984 Born in Tokyo, Japan
2010 Completed the Master Course for Inter Media Art within Graduate School of Fine Arts at Tokyo University of the Arts

■ Ryosuke Imamura exhibition
February 4th (FRI) until February 27th (SUN) 2011
Ryosuke Imamura produces an installation playing with the phenomenon of very small sound or light, as well as very small events that capture the five senses. In this exhibition he affixes small approaching sounds, small optical blinking lights, approaching the visitor with very small signs from daily life in the Shiseido Gallery’s more than 5m high exhibition space. The event of small acts happening here and there in the gallery space transcend on our memory and imagination, and those who appreciate are led to a new spectacle appointing and dismissing the boundary of daily and non-daily life.
1982 Born in Kyoto, Japan
2007 Completed the Master Course for Sculpture at the Kyoto City University of Arts

■ Naho Kawabe exhibition
March 4th (FRI) until March 27th (SUN) 2011
Naho Kawabe is an artist, using the media video camera, which owns the function, that a "certain fixed time of a phenomenon can be cut out, preserved, and reproduced in another space", while she edits the time axis and direction of moving things, pursuing deeply the act of human “visualizing” in her presentation. This exhibition presents images with different simple repeating movements and rhythms are combined and projected on the wall of the Shiseido Gallery by a projector that moves itself. The spectator is wrapped by the complexity of the complicated image, and the video installation that shakes the memory carved in our bodies.
1976 Born in Fukuoka, Japan
1999 Graduated the Bachelor Course at Visual Communication Design from the Collage of Art and Design at Musashino Art University
2006 Completed the Diploma Course at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany

* The text provided by Shiseido Gallery

Opened dates: January 7 - March 27, 2011, ＊closed January 10, March 21
Venue: Shiseido Gallery