From 1 December 2009 (Tuesday) through 9 December 2009 (Wednesday), LAPNET SHIP in Jingumae hosted “Murgraph Illustration Exhibition ‘3 chords’” — a short-run gallery show for illustrator Murgraph (Akira Shimohira). Shibuya Channel listed it on 2 December 2009 in TOPICS, with inline preview images and a surrounding-map block.
Who Murgraph was in 2009 coverage
The name Murgraph is a coinage: “murmur” (the rustle of leaves, the murmur of a stream) plus “graphic.” Akira Shimohira had worked under that handle since 2002, supplying illustrations to fashion magazines, advertising, musicians, and apparel brands.
The work centered on animals rendered with a distinctive color sense and form — imagery that had appeared across domestic and international art, design, and culture publications. By 2009 Murgraph was not an emerging zine artist; TOPICS positioned the show as a mid-career room where commercial credibility met gallery presentation.
What “3 chords” promised
The exhibition title pointed to three colors as the structural idea. Coverage invited readers to peek into “a new Murgraph world drawn in three colors” and quoted the artist calling the show something that “widened the range of what I draw.” That framing matters: the event was pitched as formal experiment within an existing animal motif, not as a break from it.
LAPNET SHIP’s floor plan in TOPICS posts was typically compact — a walk-through rather than a museum day. A nine-day window matched that scale: enough time for magazine readers and brand-side clients to stop in, not a season-long retrospective.
Venue and neighborhood placement
| Detail | Information (historical) |
|---|---|
| Dates | 1–9 Dec 2009 |
| Hours | 12:00–20:00; final day until 18:00 |
| Admission | Free |
| Venue | LAPNET SHIP |
| Address | 1-9-11 Jingumae, Shibuya, Tokyo, 1F |
| Phone | 03-5411-3330 |
| Website | http://www.lapnet.jp |
Jingumae 1-chome sits in the Shibuya ward address system on the Omotesando side of the basin — fashion showrooms, smaller galleries, and café fronts that share pedestrian flow with Harajuku without being identical to it. LAPNET SHIP was a known stop for illustration and design events of exactly this length and tone.
The venue name linked to lapnet.jp and a surrounding map. Confirm current gallery programming and tenancy before visiting.
Visual assets in the archived post
Coverage referenced a lead text image (img1_text_346.jpg) plus three inline photographs (img2_image2_146.jpg, img3_image3_134.jpg, img4_image4_110.jpg) opened in a lightbox set. Captions were empty in the extract — typical for sibch.tv TOPICS art listings where the images carried the argument.
Archive readers without the JPEGs still get the editorial claim: animal forms, restrained palette, Murgraph’s commercial polish translated to a free-admission room for nine days.
How the show sits in Shibuya’s wider map
Murgraph’s clients ranged across magazines and brands whose offices and shoot locations cluster in the same ward system as the scramble. A Shibuya Crossing live camera shows the outdoor pulse — hourly surges, billboard light, tourist density. LAPNET SHIP’s December 2009 room belonged to the indoor illustration economy that feeds those magazines: short exhibitions announced on culture portals, consumed by readers already moving between Parco, Omotesando, and back-street galleries.
Travelers stacking Shibuya culture stops with a longer outing can compare options in best day trip from Tokyo.
Free admission lowered the threshold for casual drop-ins during a week when year-end shopping traffic was rising. The TOPICS post did not review individual pieces; it announced presence, hours, and the three-color hook — enough for the audience that followed Murgraph through print work to plan a visit.
Commerce context without inventing inventory
Coverage did not list prices for originals or print editions for sale. It described the artist’s client fields and the exhibition concept, then stopped at logistics — no fabricated price list, no invented piece titles beyond “3 chords” and the three-color description.
If later LAPNET SHIP shows sold goods, that would be material from other posts. The 2 December 2009 article’s job was calendar and credentials.
Key facts from the listing
- Posted: 2 December 2009 on sibch.tv TOPICS
- Exhibition: Murgraph Illustration Exhibition “3 chords”
- Run: 1–9 Dec 2009 at LAPNET SHIP
- Artist: Murgraph (Akira Shimohira); active since 2002
- Name origin: murmur + graphic
- Work profile: animals; color and form; fashion, ads, musicians, apparel; art/design/culture press
- Concept: three-color drawings; widened range for the artist
- Admission: free
- Address: 1-9-11 Jingumae, Shibuya, 1F; tel. 03-5411-3330
Murgraph’s later catalog and LAPNET SHIP’s current program live outside this file. Confirm via official sites before citing active projects.
