Yutaka Kikutake Gallery is pleased to present Nanao Kobayashi’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, “Throw the Night,” from July 11 to August 8, 2020. This marks the artist’s first solo showing since 2009, and features a selection of new works created for this occasion.
Kobayashi is self-taught in her practice, and has produced three-dimensional works that are conceived purely from the time and act of “stitching” countless threads, stones, beads and sequins. The title of this exhibition, “Unleash the Night,” is a passage from a poem that she had written. It reflects the circumstances by which forms suddenly come to emerge before her eyes the very moment the last piece is stitched together, having until then continued to move her hands while drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness. The process of being in direct opposition to psychological and emotional aspects, to instead concentrate solely on the connecting of particles, can also be regarded as an act of perceiving something that does not in fact exist.
Perception and creativity coexist in Kobayashi’s forms, which harbor a contingency that arises as a result of deviating from contemplation. Viewers find comfort in being liberated from interpretation, free from established rules and standards, and in her works discern the time that has been elaborately stitched together in painstaking care and detail. Crystals, which have passed through “time that appears as if re-experiencing the very structure of life,” while manifesting as a precise and continued succession of the artist’s handwork, at times comes to serve as part of a drum performance. In this exhibition, attempts are made to develop the elements embedded in the space between the individual works and the artist herself into a video and a new spatial structure. What can be discerned from this is the artist’s belief in a world and existences that can be experienced only by integrating that which can be seen and what remains concealed on the reverse, and her challenge in attempting to capture it as a phenomenon.
Day and night, light and darkness, reality and unreality, existence and non-existence, visible and invisible –the boundaries between them are perhaps more ambiguous than we think, and thus it may be natural to consider that the proportion of the former and the latter may indeed change from time to time. Kobayashi’s works also draw connections to the emotional activities that while long being a part of us, we have gradually started to forget. The works, created as if trying to facilitate a means of connecting and perceiving the world, and the act of performing while adorning oneself in them, inevitably evokes the power of “prayer” that has been inherited across all regions and eras. We welcome viewers to take this opportunity to witness the nodal points that the artist has created through connecting the horizon of “existence” and the particles that have fallen from “existence.”
Yutaka Kikutake Galleryでは、7月11日（土）から8月8日（土）まで、同ギャラリーで初となる小林七生の個展「夜を飛ばす」を開催いたします。作家にとって2009年以来の個展となる本展のために制作された新作群を紹介します。
小林は独学で活動を始め、無数の糸や石、ビーズ、スパンコールを「縫う」時間と行為から純粋に現出する立体作品を制作してきました。本展タイトル『夜を飛ばす』は、彼女が書き溜めていた詩の一節であり、意識と無意識を往来しながら手を動かし続け、最後の一粒が結びついた時、突如として目の前に形が現れる状況をあらわしています。心理的なものや感情的なものと真逆に立ち、粒子をひたすらつなぐことに集中するというその過程は、実際には存在しない何かを知覚するための行為のようでもあります。
思考からはなれることから生まれる偶然性をもつ小林の造形には、知覚と創造力が同居し、解釈から解き放たれた心地よさ、決まりごとのない自由さ、そして、丹念に縫い留められた時を見出すことができます。「生命の構造を追体験するかのような時間」を駆け抜けた結晶は、緻密な作業の連なりであると同時に、時にドラム・パフォーマンスの一部として躍動します。本展では、個々の作品と作家自身との余白に潜んだ要素を映像やあらたな空間構成に展開することが試みられています。そこには、見えるものと見えない裏面とを統合してはじめて体験することのできる世界や存在を信じ、現象として掴み取ろうとする作家の挑戦を感じることができます。
昼と夜、光と闇、現実と非現実、存在するものと存在しないもの、見えるものと見えないもの、その境界線は私たちが考える以上に曖昧で、その時々において前者と後者の割合も変化すると考えるのが自然なのかもしれません。小林の作品は、私達がながらく共にありながら忘れかけている心の営みにも通じます。世界とつながること、感知することを手繰り寄せるように生み出された作品、それをまとい奏でる行為は、あらゆる時代、あらゆる土地で受け継がれた「祈り」の力を否応なく喚起させます。一人の作家が「存在」の地平と「存在」から零れ落ちた粒子をつなぐことで表出させた結節点をご覧ください。
