Advertising That Sure Is Art

Talk about media-neutral: Kao Brands has paid an undisclosed fee to appear on four sides of a cube-shaped sculpture by Keith Tyson, a British artist whose 45-piece exhibition titled “Geno Pheno” has been showing at the PaceWildenstein gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea district for about a week. The ads were placed by Richard Kirshenbaum, a longtime art collector and co-chairman of Kao ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners, at the request of the gallery.

“My job is to make sure they’re front and center with popular culture … and having your brand show up in a museum or an art gallery is not exactly a bad thing,” says Kirshenbaum.