Rising Painter Osamu Kobayashi’s Ethereal Abstractions Evoke Spectral Visions
In his Brooklyn studio under the Gowanus Expressway, painter Osamu Kobayashi fills notebooks with approximately two-square-inch sketches of abstract shapes. These small graphite doodles, lined up in grids in his sketchbook, are the blueprints for the color-drenched canvases that fill his studio, including Inner, Outer (2023), an expansive abstract painting resembling a figure eight. He closely references these drawings, placing checkmarks next to those he wants to paint. Then, Kobayashi uses huge brushes—some created by affixing almost 30 utility brushes to a single piece of molding—to translate these forms onto the canvas.