Osamu Kobayashi: Lost Stranger

18 Oct-23 Nov 2024

PV 17 Oct 2024, 6-8pm

Overview

Kobayashi's gestural, technically complex works appear rooted in atmosphere and emotion. Emotive, undulating forms seem to ebb and flow in space, practically pulsating off the canvas. But for Kobayashi, these so-called emotional landscapes are intended to provoke playful, slow revelations for the viewer, each firmly situated in complex human emotions and even, according to the artist, personified - each painting like a character in a larger story. 

Kobayashi explains of his new works, ‘all the paintings depict faces (or what appear to be cropped portions of faces) but despite the smiles, other emotions lie below. The characters become more complex over time. What adds to the idea of lost or wistfulness in the work is the intangibility of some of the colours and gradients in relation to other more defined shapes and textures. The undefined ethereal spaces are beyond tangibility, and therefore create a sense of longing, of something out of reach."

Perhaps these sensations have to do with the overlapping or quiet horizons that Kobayashi portrays. These paintings embody a sense of narrative, too, where art is about framing, composition, and choice - Kobayashi directs the scene - choosing when and where to freeze-the-frame. With such reductive, sensual encounters, where he pulls our gaze, the colours he chooses, and the movement he selects are all crucial to our reading of the painting. 

But here, for the first time, Kobayashi brings a wry sense of irony. To lesser or greater degrees, we might see smiling faces or clownish colours, but indeed how much we wish to assume these works are literal zoom-ins on smiley faces or whether they're deeply sensuous, metaphorical landscapes is perhaps relegated to the reading of each viewer, and the joy and excitement of these works is probably what we take with us, and how we understand the visual clues he's ever so carefully mapped out. We can be certain his choices are exacted, enacted, and executed with precision and intent. 

We warmly invite you to view the works in advance or in person. Kobayashi's exhibition opens with us in London on Thursday 17 October 2024.

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