Artist and the Model
About Exhibition
ShugoArts is pleased to announce the opening of Artist and the Model by Masato Kobayashi from the 1st of June.
Traditionally, the relationship between an artist and a model was “to see and to be seen” or “to paint or to be painted.” However, a model can sometimes go beyond said relationship, affect the artist’s sensitivity and act as a mediator who makes the invisible visible. For Kobayashi, he started painting in high school to visualize the person he fell in love with. Since then, his models have been the source of his creations and also his co-creators.
Kobayashi’s artworks are not isolated objects but paintings that exist in this planet’s time and space. In order to visualize his concept, he abandoned the rectangle frame in the 1990s and created his own method to combine his soul and body by painting with his own hands while stretching the canvas at the same time. In addition, since the 2000s, Kobayashi has created many artworks that expand the border between the abject and the beautiful.
In this exhibition Kobayashi, who started making pieces for the exhibition in 2017, presents the model lying sideways and facing backwards who is shot through the heart from behind and also the horse (the artist) that has a brush in its mouth, grinding its teeth. The relationship between the two characters is very mysterious and it does not really suggest a happy ending. In this process, the artist lives through reality and painting, and connects the past and the present moment in order to form beauty. His action is mysterious and cannot be achieved by himself, so Kobayashi keeps creating under the same theme: Artist and the Model so that he can dedicate his art to this planet. We hope to see you at the exhibition.
May 2019, ShugoArts
Curated by Minako Ishii
Information
2019.6.1 Sat – 7.6 Sat
ShugoArts
11am ‒ 7pm, Closed on Sun, Mon and Public Holidays
From 3pm, Sat., June 1
ShugoArts
Please contact us on event@shugoarts.com.
Masato Kobayashi was born in Tokyo in 1957. He was the Japanese representative of the 1996 São Paulo Bienniale. In 1997, invited by Jan Hoet, he traveled to Europe, and continued to create works in various locations while based in Ghent, Belgium. Kobayashi returned to Japan in 2006 and began working based in Tomonoura, Fukuyama City, Hiroshima. He was also a professor at the Tokyo University of the Arts from 2017 to 2023. He has developed a unique technique of applying color by rubbing it into the canvas while supporting the fabric with one hand, simultaneously stretching it over the wooden frame to bring the painting to life and “aiming for a painting that does not lose its essence by merely existing.” Kobayashi has prolifically produced paintings that possess a form and unique brightness that can only emerge from that specific situation.
Selected solo exhibitions: “About Freedom”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2023; “Family of this Planet”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2021; “Artist and the Model”, ShugoArts, Tokyo, 2019; “ART TODAY 2012”, Sezon Museum of Modern Art, Nagano, 2012; “MASATO KOBAYASHI – The Paint of the Planet”, Nariwa Museum, Okayama, 2009; “Starry Paint, stars of outer space by pure painting”, Tensta Konsthall, Spanga, Sweden, 2004; “A Son of Painting Masato Kobayashi”, S.M.A.K., Ghent, 2001; “KOBAYASHI Masato”, The Miyagi Museum of Art, 2000.
Publications: Masato Kobayashi MK, HeHe, 2024; The autobiographical novel trilogy, Paint of this Planet—Under the tree at Hitotsubashi University, ART DIVER, 2018; Paint of this Planet—Duifhuisstraat 52, ART DIVER, 2020
Selected Public Collections: Iwaki City Art Museum (Iwaki, Japan). The Miyagi Museum of Art (Sendai, Japan). The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (Tokyo, Japan). Utsunomiya Museum of Art (Utsunomiya, Japan). S.M.A.K. The Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art (Ghent, Belgium). The Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum (Shizuoka, Japan)