Past Exhibition

Link of Life 2017—“Right Brain, About-Face!”

Link of Life 2017—“Right Brain, About-Face!”

Duration: October 26 (Thu) — November 10 (Fri)

Shiseido Company, Limited (Shiseido) is pleased to announce that from October 26 (Thu) through November 10 (Fri), 2017, the Shiseido Gallery, located in Tokyo’s Ginza district, will host Link of Life 2017—“Right Brain, About-Face!”, an exhibition showcasing efforts to “create new beauty” through collaborations linking Shiseido researchers and other employees with outside artists, companies, and organizations.

Background of the Exhibition

Over its 145-year history, Shiseido has embraced a corporate vision of “discovering and creating new value,” and has always sought to create “new beauty” for society in step with the changing times. The company is now working on creating the model for Shiseido to remain vital for the next 100 years, based on its “VISION 2020” medium- to long-term strategy.

We have come to a renewed understanding that one important element of any sustainable growth will be the traditions and culture Shiseido has inherited and accumulated. These are the fount of Shiseido’s originality.

It is often said that long-term corporate growth today must embrace perspectives on the three areas of “Environment,” “Society” and “Governance” (ESG). Shiseido goes a step further to also put effort and energy into “Culture” (ESGC).

LINK OF LIFE, a Shiseido initiative started in 2015 under the coaching of creative director Dai Fujiwara, aims to link Shiseido researchers and other employees to creators, companies and organizations in other fields toward exploring the possibilities for creating new value. The fruits of these collaborations have been publicly displayed in exhibitions at the Shiseido Hanatsubaki Hall located in the company’s headquarters building.

For this third year, having renewed LINK OF LIFE as a mechanism for Shiseido’s cultural messaging, the exhibition will be held at the Shiseido Gallery, a space that in addition to being Japan’s oldest extant gallery space, also embodies Shiseido’s “discovering and creating new beauty” action philosophy.

Link of Life 2017—“Right Brain, About-Face!”

About LINK OF LIFE

LINK OF LIFE’s first exhibition in 2015, titled “Touch. Feel. Experience in the Big Beauty Lab,” explored the concept of “touch” as a very ordinary everyday action that is surprisingly difficult to express. In 2016, a second iteration, titled “Aging? Future!”, focused on the concept of “successful aging” (“accumulating the years beautifully,” a vision first proposed by Shiseido in 1989) and considered what it will mean to live beautifully in the future in light of the reality of Japan’s aging society.

This year the exhibition takes up the subject of “new beauty,” presenting works created by Shiseido researchers and employees teaming up with outside artists, companies and organizations to explore new inspirations and advanced technologies. Reinterpreting last year’s “successful aging” theme, they have proposed the new concept “asobi-neering” (“play-gineering” in English), which is all about “stimulating the right side of the brain to sharpen and clarify the sensibilities toward accumulating beauty that can fulfill the playful spirit.” This idea has led to the creation of these art works in which sensory (right-brain) stimulation brings out the beauty within people. The aim is to have an exhibition that not only pleases the right side of the brain, but also offers the possibility of discovering clues as to how to build a richer future.

■Link of Life 2017—“Right Brain, About-Face!” Exhibition  Exhibition Details

Sponsor: Shiseido Co., Ltd.
Dates: October 26 (Thu) to November 10 (Fri), 2017
Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11:00AM–7:00PM
Sunday and national holidays 11:00AM–6:00PM
Closed Mondays (including national holidays)
Venue: The Shiseido Gallery,
Ginza Shiseido Building, B1, 8-8-3 Ginza, Chuo-ku,
Tokyo 104-0061
Collaborators: Beige Creative & Co., Inc.
Hitachi, Ltd.
JST ERATO Kawahara Universal Information Network Project
Kanehon Limited
Matsuura Yakugyo Co., Ltd.
Ogawa & Co., Ltd.
Rikashitsu Co., Ltd.
Sekiya Rika Co., Ltd.
T. Hasegawa Co. Ltd.
V. MANE FILS JAPAN, LTD
Masayuki Iigo (Department of Applied Biological Chemistry, Utsunomiya University)

General Descriptions of Works on Display

  • Creators
  • Creative Concept
  • Hiroko Ozeki (Brand SHISEIDO PR)
    Ai Hasegawa (artist)
    Kaori Inaba (Shiseido researcher)
    Parima Tayebi (Shiseido product development director)
  • Do we not so often limit ourselves to fit some “ideal Japanese woman” image that would have us be only gentle, modest, mild, and weak? Surely we have within us feelings and talents that have yet to be awakened, and the potential to meet new parts of ourselves. This work incorporates images and fragrances that seek to release the “wild” so long confined and sleeping within that “ideal Japanese woman,” offering a chance to experience a temporary transformation from a “Japanese woman” to a “shark,” and to feel a “flowering,” that is to say a “blossoming of inherent talent.”
  • Yasuo Kato (Shiseido researcher)
    Haruka Furuya (director/ creative director)
  • The word “teate” means “providing care,” particularly in the sense of “a laying on of hands.” It references an age-old practice of using the hands (or palms) to touch parts of the body that are in some poor condition as a means of ameliorating uncomfortable symptoms. How do our bodies change in response to “touching”? We turned our eyes on the potential to go through skin and flesh to arrive at a “dialogue of the physical body,” merging art with future communication technologies that use the body as a transmission path, resulting in the presentation of a “Touch Theatre” that proposes a new kind of communication.
  • Miho Miyanaga (Shiseido researcher)
    Yoko Shimizu (artist and researcher)
    Yuta Manaka (Shiseido researcher)
  • This installation work in a potentially experiential form attempts to express, through the mixing of chemical components, the sparkle, diversity and contradictions inherent in women today. Using the flavor and fragrance technologies usually applied to Shiseido’s food and perfume development, this work attempts to express the diversity of women through various formulations of ingredients.

Profiles of the Main Contributors

<OUTSIDE CONTRIBUTORS>

Ai Hasegawa

Artist/designer. Born in Shizuoka prefecture, Ai Hasegawa graduated from Gifu prefecture’s International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, then in 2012 earned an MA degree from the Royal College of Art in England. From 2014, she was assistant researcher at MIT’s Media Lab, earning an MS degree in 2016. From 2017, she became a specially appointed researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. Her work explores new relationships between human beings and technology using approaches and techniques like bio-art, speculative design, and design fiction. She exhibits both in Japan and abroad, with venues including the Mori Art Museum, the Ars Electronica Center, and others. Her “(Im)possible Baby, Case 01: Asako & Moriga” won the Excellence Award in the Art Division of the 19th Japan Media Arts Festival.

Ai Hasegawa

Haruka Furuya

Director and creative director Haruka Furuya was born in Tokyo and spent her high school years in Germany. She later graduated from the drama department of the University of Bristol in England. After directing dramas mainly in the theaters in Germany and England, she moved into the advertising industry. With the commercial production company Taiyo Kikaku she worked not only in film, but also on complex performances incorporating space and technology. By July 2014 she had struck out on her own, and her freelance efforts have included singer Namie Amuro’s “Birthday” music video, art direction for NHK’s The Lady Warlord television drama series, and art direction of visuals and displays for department stores like Parco, Lumine, and Mitsukoshi-Isetan. She has won awards from MTV VMAJ and One Show Interactive, among others.

Haruka Furuya

Yoko Shimizu

Artist and researcher Yoko Shimizu was born in Kyoto and graduated from Kobe University’s biochemistry department. As a child, she had spent a number of years in the United States and would eventually find herself influenced by theNew York art scene. In her “+1e” biotechnology lab she researches design that incorporates biotechnology and other advanced sciences, globally deploying works that merge science and art. She has been a personality on international broadcasting stations, active in media presentations like TED and FITC, and a participant in the Ars Electronica Festival in 2016. Awards include the Newcomer Award for the Aichi Prefectural Arts and Culture awards.

Yoko Shimizu

<SHISEIDO STAFF>

Hiroko Ozeki
(Shiseido Global Prestige Brands Division, SHISEIDO Brand Unit)

Born in Osaka, Hiroko Ozeki went to the United States and became involved in the New York art business. In 2000, she coordinated a Shiseido corporate exhibit at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, and it was in that connection that she would later join Shiseido in 2005. She currently oversees promotions in the U.S. market, and even while having moved internally among Shiseido’s various departments, her work has consistently involved the communication of Shiseido’s corporate values. She is currently in the SHISEIDO Brand Unit, working on international promotions and other projects.

Hiroko Ozeki

Yasuo Kato
(Shiseido Innovation Design Lab)

Born in Hokkaido, Yasuo Kato completed a doctoral course at Aoyama Gakuin’s Graduate School of Science and Engineering, then went on to earn a doctoral degree in engineering. He joined NEC in 1987, then later moved to NTT’s Atsugi Communications Research Labs. In 2011, he began studying human body communication technology at Aoyama Gakuin. In 2012, he won the Best Paper Award at a symposium sponsored by the IEEE, the world's most prestigious electrical engineering organization. Having joined Shiseido in 2016, he proposed the new concept “cosmetronics” as an approach to combining beauty and electronic engineering. Currently he serves as one of Shiseido’s seven Principle Researchers, the highest level in the current active research team.

Yasuo Kato

Miho Miyanaga
(Shiseido Global Innovation Center)

Born in Fukuoka prefecture, Miho Miyanaga studied at Kyushu University’s Graduate School of System Life Sciences, there completing a master’s degree in cell regulation engineering. In university, she studied areas including “G2-M period checkpoint impedients” and “Anti-metabolic syndrome effect by functional food components.” Since joining Shiseido, she has been involved in studies on skin care product manufacture and mass-production. She currently works on brand management for the BENEFIQUE supplements and such brands as Pure White, and is also involved in research and development on beauty food products that realize both beauty and good health that serves as a foundation of beauty.

Miho Miyanaga

<EXHIBITION DIRECTOR & DESIGN COACH>

Dai Fujiwara
Creative Director / Designer / Artist

Born in Kanagawa prefecture, Dai Fujiwara studied in China at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, there learning about Asian philosophy, and he also graduated from Tama Art University. Having worked as a creative director for the Men’s and Ladies brands at the Issey Miyake Paris Collection, he went on to hold posts including vice-chairman and others in the Miyake Design Office. He is widely involved in planning museum exhibitions and presenting lectures, and has been the recipient of numerous awards for his efforts. He has presented academic lectures and workshops, including at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and Moscow State University. Currently he is the president of Daifujiwara Design Inc., professor at Tama Art University, researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Industrial Sciences, and honorary visiting professor at Kanazawa College of Art. Many of his activities involve building connections between art and science. Since 2015 he has served as LINK OF LIFE’s exhibition director.

Dai Fujiwara

Related Events

Gallery talk with exhibition director Dai Fujiwara and exhibit creators

Dates: November 3, 2017 (Fri – Holiday), 2PM-3PM
Venue: The Shiseido Gallery
*Participation is free and no reservations are necessary