Of course, everything we do can be explained by our actions.
But, I have to say the following right afterwards,
Everything that can be explained can be explained by actions.
And, very few things can be explained after all.
What I can say about freedom is, perhaps, how I go about making my frames.
August 2023 Masato Kobayashi
About Exhibition
All of Masato Kobayashi’s artworks have no fixed forms, but are free and flexible. His style of painting while stretching the canvas is unprecedented. The titles of his works refuse to be categorized with anonymity, such as A Son of Painting, Unnamed, and Nameless Horse. Can we really call these paintings? But, to backpedal for a moment, who decided that images exist within a defined square, detached from reality, when nothing in this world is complete in itself?
Masato KOBAYASHI, Unnamed #66, 2019, oil, canvas, wood, 190 x 300 x 50cm
Masato KOBAYASHI , A Model of This Planet (Cowgirl Taking Off Her Gloves), 2023, oil, canvas, wood, 200 x 143 x 60cm
Masato Kobayashi says that everything in this world is “the scenery of paintings.” And there are various “frames” in this world. Without social frameworks, the frameworks of reality, and so on, nothing would exist. Therefore, “freedom,” as Kobayashi describes it, does not mean that one can ignore the framework and act as one pleases. Rather, it is a question of how human beings use their imagination to cut out the world, how much of the endlessly expanding reality a painting can take on in its body, how an artist sets the outer frame of such a painting, and how those things affect the freedom of art.
Masato KOBAYASHI, Starry Paint, stars of outer space by pure painting, Tensta Konsthall, Spanga, Sweden, 2004 – 2005
This exhibition consists of three large floor-standing works. The new work, Artist, was originally part of a work created for his solo exhibition Starry Paint in 2004 in Tensta Konsthall, Sweden. Standing 2 x 10 meters, the huge work was cut into pieces by Kobayashi at the end of the exhibition and brought back to Ghent, Belgium, as fragments. As many of them were transformed into small star-like works, so will this work appear in the present space as a completely new entity. A Model of This Planet (Cowgirl Taking Off Her Gloves), which was created from the physical traces of a model, and Unnamed #66, which has traveled to various places from his studio in Tomonoura, Hiroshima, are all works that should be experienced by all of the senses. More than 25 years have passed since Masato Kobayashi created his first floor-standing painting in Ghent. Please look forward to this exhibition of new artworks by Masato Kobayashi, who has continued to embody the freedom of art and artists.
August 2023 ShugoArts
Information
Friday, September 22 – Sunday, November 5, 2023
ShugoArts
11am ‒ 6pm, Closed on Sun, Mon and Public Holidays
Directed by Minako Ishii
6 October − 9 October
Location: Tennozu Canal area, Tokyo
Kenjiro Hosaka
2 November – 5 November
Okura Museum of Art
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)
