The 15th shiseido art eggࢠ໨Ƥ‫ۼ‬৅‫ڻ‬ӓ

Gravity and Radiance

Umi Ishihara

Duration: September 14 (Tue)–October 10 (Sun), 2021
Weekdays: 11:00–19:00① Gravity and Halo 2021 HD video
Cast: Tameharu Shimobeppu
Music: Yusaku Arai
② Gravity and RadianceSundays and holidays: 11:00–18:00
Closed Mondays (including national holidays falling on Monday)
Organized by Shiseido Company, Limited*Content and schedule are subject to change dependingon the status of Covid 19 infection.

2021

30min

③ Gravity and Fluctuation

2021④ Rite of the Apostles 2021
Cast: Kinu Kakimoto⑤ Body of Christ

2021

Masayo Kawauchi
Tomoko Okuda
Tomoshi Okuda

Jesus
Judah, manAngelAngel
Apostle, woman, Angel
Apostle, man, Angel
Apostle, man,Mary Magdalene
Apostle, woman
Apostle, woman
PriestBread①mezzanine④⑤③

Director: Umi Ishihara
Producer: Akira Okuda
Director of photography: Saki Yagi
Sound: Takuya Kawakami
Production: Kinu Kakimoto
2nd Camera: Terukazu Sugino (TONPETTY Inc.)

Ishihara’s exhibit proposal is about what could be described as the hard labor of making a film in conjunction with the congregation of a church while
coming to grips with social realities along the way, and was selected in eager anticipation of the kind of gestures potentially revealed in a video
installation that replaces Weil’s experience* with one at a church in Kita-Kyushu, intersecting theater conducted with the congregation of the churchwith reality, as a kind of metafiction.
This exhibition centering on a video work, unfolding into an installation in the smaller gallery, addresses such universal themes as pain and themeaning of life.

Production designer: Tetsutaro Nakamura
Production designer: Hanako Maeda
Gaffer: Yoshitaka Shimamura
Best boy: Hikaru Ijichi
Hair and Makeup: Ayano Ura
Hair and Makeup: Uran Takenaka
Costumes: Tatsuhiro Tsukano
General affairs: Mizuki Kimura
Coordinator: Miki Tanise (Pikaluck)
Cooperation: Toshihiko Kuwashima / Miki Tsukano /Higashiyahata Christ ChurchLocation: Edamitsu Honmachi Shopping Street Iron Theater*From jury comments by Toshiharu Ito: “Ill and exhausted after an extended period in unskilled factory jobs, Weil headed for Portugal, where in a deserted*Please do not photograph video work and exhibition staff with angel costume.

②Reception

village one night, she had her first personal encounter with the divine, and became convinced that beauty was the sole road to truth. This world is governed
by gravity, always, relentlessly heading downward, and even if we try to diverge from this, our spirits, governed by gravity, will err repeatedly. So rather thanattempting to elevate ourselves, the preferable course is to wait and hope. It is only by divine favor that we can avoid falling, and allow ourselves to soar.”

The father of the friend who had brought me to Kita-Kyushu was a pastor who also gave practical help to those in need, and I too gradually started
going to church. Spending time with those at the church, in a place where I still knew few people, I found myself wanting to make a work with thepeople here, because documenting the lives of the sinners who congregated at this church, damaged yet deserving of love, struck me as animportant thing to do.
Gravity and Radiance is a video installation composed of a Passion play depicting the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ made with people fromthe church, of all ages and backgrounds, plus interviews with those people. Just being alive can make you feel as if gravity is pulling you under, but
I made this work to celebrate that moment when prayer releases you from gravity just for an instant, allowing you to float freely.
Umi Ishihara

HD video (loop)*Weekdays and Saturday only

All three artists came up with proposals that subtly interrogate the dangers of these times of uncertainty and instability, look at potential sources ofhope, and encourage us to rethink conventional notions of “the art experience.” Perhaps their efforts to share, by exhibiting, experiences that only
art can offer, in turn offer valuable clues for the generation of new values at a time when the future is so hard to see.

At the time I suddenly decided to go live in Kita-Kyushu, I was a lost soul, having no longer any idea how to go on with my life in these chaotic
circumstances. I was just plain tired. I think I returned to a place that was not even mine originally, relying solely on memories of living in the churcha few years earlier, taken there by a friend, because without prayer or something like it, I could no longer stand being alive.

Moving light

11:00 / 11:30 / 12:00 / 12:30 / 13:00 / 13:30 / 14:00 / 14:30 /15:00 / 15:30 / 16:00 / 16:30 / 17:00 / 17:30 / 18:00* / 18:30*“shiseido art egg” is an open-call program that offers up-and-coming artists the chance to exhibit at the Shiseido Gallery, now dedicated to thediscovery and creation of new kinds of beauty for over a century. This 15th edition of the program received 243 applications from all over Japan,including, once again, a large number of extraordinarily creative proposals making optimal use of the Shiseido Gallery exhibition spaces. From these,
the artists Umi Ishihara, Mika Kan, and Kayako Nakashima were chosen for their unconventional takes on today’s new values and aesthetics, withsolo exhibitions by these artists being staged in turn at the Shiseido Gallery from September to December.

For this exhibition Ishihara joined formerly needy individuals who gather at a church in Kita-Kyushu along with church staff to put on a play with abiblical theme, which she filmed. In the large gallery, for the section devoted to this play we screen the artist’s video, interspersed with interviews withthe actors. The interviews show formerly struggling people from various backgrounds, and those who support them, talking about their lives. An
attempt by an artist whose works to date have incorporated her personal experience and real events, to tackle the realities of others, this work is also
influenced by Simone Weil’s Gravity and Grace, and according to Ishihara, explores the nature of suffering and forgiveness.

HD videoStart time:

Cast: Kiyoshi Kikukawa
Shinji Mori
Nobuko Fujita
Fukuto Ishibashi
Kanna Murakami
Tameharu Shimobeppu
Nobuyuki Nishihara

Umi Ishihara, the first artist to present her work, makes experimental films and video installations on the themes of love, gender, personal histories,and society. Revolving around actual events, and constructed with the addition of fictive and narrative elements, Ishihara’s works neatly capture
various aspects of modern society, and the subtle workings of the human heart. In recent years she has expanded her presence and profile in the artand film domains, notably through selection for Britain’s “Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2019” exhibition for emerging artists, and by having twoof her films chosen simultaneously for the International Film Festival Rotterdam.

3minUmi Ishihara
1993 Born in Tokyo
2018 BFA Intermedia Art, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan
2021 MA Artist’s Film, Goldsmiths University of London, UK (leave of absence)
Currently lives in Fukuoka Prefecture
Selected film festival screenings
2019 Janitor of Lunacy BBC, BFI Southbank (London)
2019 The Garden Apartment / The Pioneer, International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam)
Selected solo shows2017 “Mire of Dickhead Demon,” TAV Gallery (Tokyo)
Selected group exhibitions
2021 “Digitalis or First-Person Camera | Umi Ishihara, Maiko Endo, Yokna Hasegawa, Mayumi Hosokura,”
Takuro Someya Contemporary Art (Tokyo)
2019 Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery (London)