Osamu Kobayashi

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present On Apparition, the Brooklyn-based artist Osamu Kobayashi’s first solo exhibition with the gallery following his participation in several group shows over the past few years. In his latest body of work, Kobayashi continues to experiment with bold brushwork, using his whole body to glide large-scale brushes across his canvases, resulting in paintings that capture a sense of fluidity and motion. Suggestions of shapes and figures playfully emerge throughout Kobayashi’s work, which has a whimsical nature that at times belies its more serious and historic influences. On Apparition presents twelve of the artist’s newest paintings and will be on view on the first floor of Hollis Taggart from January 11 through February 10, 2024, with an opening reception on Thursday, January 11^th, from 5-8PM.

Osamu Kobayashi’s (born 1984) seemingly simple paintings are deceptively complex with intricate layering and a tactile, gestural application of paint. Kobayashi’s process begins with hundreds of sketches of biomorphic and geometric shapes in a comic-strip like format that reveals his interest in sequential art and animation. In his sketches – as in his paintings – forms come in and out of existence, with hints of recognizable shapes that disappear almost as quickly as they can be identified. Kobayashi selects the most enigmatic of forms and shapes to translate into his paintings, creating a larger graphite sketch on a primed canvas that comes to life through the artist’s unusual and meticulous application of paint.

Influenced by Color Field painting as well as his own deep study of chromatic combinations, Kobayashi is a master of color, often coalescing various color blocks to create a rainbow-like exploration of gradient. The artist is known for his large-scale brushes, which he creates by affixing multiple utility brushes – at times up to thirty of them– to a single piece of molding. Kobayashi then uses his whole body to create the precise curves of sweeping brushstrokes, almost as if leaving the impressions of a dance on his canvases,  a process that resembles the raking of sand in Japanese dry gardens. He often adds unexpected small moments of bold color, creating an element of surprise and delight to the final works. As Andrew Schwartz notes in the catalogue essay, “His diligence as a colorist pays off in spades, rewarding our retinas with satisfying chromatic complexity.”

While in dialogue with Color Field painters and Post-war experimental abstract artists like Ed Clark and Frank Bowling who also used unconventional brushes, Kobayashi’s work is also guided by his interest in the surreal as well as the influence of his Japanese heritage. Simultaneously drawing from multiple influences, Kobayashi is redefining abstraction on his own terms. Showcasing the artist’s commitment to precision as well as his sense of humor, the new body of work presented in On Apparition encourages slow viewing and an appreciation of forms that  Schwartz writes “seem to quiver and shrink before our eyes, like phantoms lodged in sensual fields of bright oil paint.”

Kobayashi was born in Columbia, South Carolina in 1984 and received a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2006. He has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including solo exhibitions at Underdonk Gallery, New York; A+B Gallery, Brescia, Italy; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Florida; Greenwich House, New York; John David Gallery, Hudson, New York; and LA Artcore, Los Angeles. He has participated in group exhibitions at Lissone Contemporary Art Museum, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery at Stony Brook University, the Bronx River Art Center, and the Columbia Museum of Art. In 2013, Kobayashi was awarded the Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Fund from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2021, he was awarded a NYFA Artist Fellowship. He was also a participant in the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. He lives and works in Brooklyn.

For more information about Osamu Kobayashi: On Apparition, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

For press inquiries, please contact Aga Sablinska at aga.sablinska@gmail.com or +1 862.216.6485.