MASATO KOBAYASHI

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.