The 15th shiseido art egg
Duration: October 19 (Tue)–Noveｍber 14 (Sun) , 2021
Weekdays: 11:00–19:00

On the exhibition title
The Japanese title of the exhibition, “Kasou no uso ka” is a palindrome, that is, reads the same from front or back, in this case like a reflecting
mirror centered on the character no. The word kasou means “a hypothetical imagining” and also “virtual.” Are the works “lies” (uso) expressing
an imagined “what if?” Or do they suggest the kind of “lie” in which the content of a photo has been digitally altered? The particle ka at the end
indicates grammatically not only a question, but also the potential for an alternative meaning. The question would be “Kasou no uso ka?” (Is it animaginary lie?) but I refrained from adding a question mark, to allow for a possible reading of “An imaginary lie or...(not).”

Sundays and holidays: 11:00–18:00
Closed Mondays (including national holidays falling on Monday)① The Light in the Eye, 2021
Glass, one-way mirrors, LED light unit, glass sandWith production assistance from Akihiro Okama (Glass artist)①

Organized by Shiseido Company, Limited

mezzanine*Content and schedule are subject to change depending② Stay Paradise, 2021
Inkjet print
With production assistance from Kashima Corporationon the status of Covid 19 infection.

③ Double Teleidoscope, 2021
Video (1’47” looped)⑤④ Watchful Machine 05, 2021
Fresnel lens, steel“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. Fromthese, the artists Umi Ishihara, Mika Kan, and Kayako Nakashima were chosen for their unconventional takes on today’s new values andaesthetics, with solo exhibitions by these artists being staged in turn at the Shiseido Gallery from September to December.

③④All three artists came up with proposals that subtly interrogate the dangers of these times of uncertainty and instability, look at potential sourcesof hope, and encourage us to rethink conventional notions of “the art experience.” Perhaps their efforts to share, by exhibiting, experiences that②

⑤ Paradise Shift, 2021
Wood, plexiglass, monitors, video (2’29” looped), prism,teleidoscope, iphone, turntable, table, chairs, stools,
floor lights, air plants, fake plants, paintings, Inkjet print, mirror,frame, easel, cabinet, wallpaper,With production assistance from And Greenworks Co., Ltd.
PLANTS and LIVING

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.
This year’s second shiseido art egg exhibition is “Imaginary Lie” by Mika Kan.

Reception

With procreation as her theme, previously Kan has taken photographs of dolls as a way of exploring the question of what constitutes human.
Here she presents the latest in her “Won’t Let You Go” series of self-portraits launched in 2019, shot alongside dolls made using casts of her own
head and depicting clones as “artificial twins,” based on the somatic cell cloning technology already in use today in settings such as the livestockindustry. The gallery space is made up of photo, video and installation elements], the works on display inspired by the manmade humans of 19thand early 20th-century science fiction, and the optical equipment invented during the same period.
A space designed to resemble a kaleidoscope reflects images in an exhibition that shakes up visual perceptions and offers a preview of changing
values in the not-too-distant future, presenting the viewer with a totally new world.

On Paradise
I am currently using a room in the “Paradise AIR” artist-in-residence facility in Matsudo, Chiba as a studio. The building was originally a hotel, so
the interior of my room remains basically as it was in its earlier incarnation, with the addition of my own furniture and equipment to make it easier
to work in as a studio.
Stay Paradise
For me, the pandemic exhortation to “stay home” meant a “stay Paradise” of hunkering down in the studio alone and quietly getting on withmaking stuff. Having tried my utmost to avoid direct human contact, and spent all that time with a doll instead, three years after her casting I catchmyself chatting to her now and then.

From the end of the 18th century, “phantasmagoria” horror shows, in which images of ghosts were projected onto smoke screens and othersurfaces using a magic lantern (slide projector using a lamp and lens), were staged in Britain and elsewhere as a form of entertainment. Once
photographic technology had been invented, it was also employed to make the hitherto handpainted slides. In 1862, in a type of theater that
became widely known as Dircksian Phantasmagoria, a different mechanism to that of the magic lantern dubbed “Pepper’s ghost” was employed
for the first time. This setup showed an actual stage set overlaid with a virtual ghost projected on glass, and apparently, though spectators knew
this was merely an artificial effect, its power to evoke images of genuine spooks still made it frightening.

Paradise Shift
The ground floor of the building is occupied by a pachinko parlor called Rakuen, meaning “Paradise,” which is how the residence got its name.
So once expelled from paradise, must we then shoulder all the suffering of life? If so, in order to remain here, I decided to alter myself. I needed
to make the leap from the photographic works that had hitherto been my obsession, to the likes of installations, and videos using digitalcompositing, and effect a renewal of everything I had taken for granted. The black box in Paradise Shift is a monitor recreating the 19th-century
visual trick “Pepper’s ghost.” Exploring what constitutes human, and modifying the very substance of myself, I found the “ghost” of Paradise tobe something between human and doll.

The development of a number of new optical devices during this period was mirrored in literature by motifs such as twins and alter egos, and theexploration of themes like the duality of the self, and conflicting egos. German Romantic author E.T.A. Hoffman wrote in his journal, “I amimagining myself trapped in a kaleidoscope – all figures that move around me are different forms of my ego.” In Hoffman’s short story TheSandman (1816) the protagonist mistakes an automaton spied through his telescope for a flesh-and-blood woman. Thus optical devices reflectand refract light, multiplying images and causing visual illusions.
But by the early 20th century, the true nature of light had been revealed, and supernatural motifs gradually disappeared from literature, to bereplaced by mechanical, human-like androids, and artificial humans cultivated from cells. This was also the era of camera-like copying devices
duplicating human beings, and monstrous children created by artificial insemination.
In that it caused a temporary suspension of disbelief in a virtual world, the genre of “doll photography” that appeared in the 1920s was similar totheater. Just as manmade ghosts played the part of ghosts, in doll photography, dolls, ie manmade people, play people. Despite the obvious
lifelessness of dolls, we invariably sense something human in them. Doll photography is a form of expression that arose precisely because people
believed that photos recreated traces of reality. These days though, when filters can be used to distort, and we can alter images digitally, there is
no way to check what is real. At a moment in history when the line between genuine and fake has never been more blurred, what is it we arelooking at?

Mika Kan
1988 Born in Yokohama
2021 Ph.D, Inter Media Art Course, Tokyo University of the Arts
Currently lives in Chiba
Main solo exhibition
2021 “BankART U35 Solo Exhibition Mika Kan,” BankART KAIKO, Yokohama
2019 “The Ghost in the Doll,” The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, Saitama
Main group exhibition

Mika Kan

2020 “Listen to Her Song,” The University Art Museum, Tokyo University of the Arts, Tokyo
2020 “VOCA2020 The Vision of Contemporary Art,” The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo

The 15th shiseido art egg Mika Kan exhibition
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