Critics
Maiko Kobayashi – Creatures with Psychological Heads
Humans have faces, or more precisely complex and profound surfaces known as faces. These surfaces are in the foreground on behalf of language and text, or rather appear beyond the latter’s absence and concealment, oppression and constraints as if pushed from its bare and honest state. The face with no voice and words inevitably reveals and discloses everything that is going on in the body. The eyes, in particular, are the only and most powerful organ through which those from within flow out. While other sensory organs on the face serve as a sort of symbol or image to show emotions through facial expressions and wrinkles, human eyes powerfully draw the attention of others and reflect the state of emotion like a landscape. Furthermore, the eyes, as it endlessly moves, continuously reveal the ambiguity of the lively, active body and emotions. Those are eyes to see and eyes to be seen. My eyes are mine, but so are the eyes of others.
Maiko Kobayashi draws only the heads of animals that resemble human faces. Technically they are not animals, but her drawings are reminiscent of them. The artist’s intention was not to recreate the animals but instead create similar heads derived from them but simplified, iconized and characterized. Kobayashi’s heads appear to be a complex mixture of humans, dolls and animal faces/ heads. They don’t look like human faces, but the heads carry intricate, personal and delicate emotions just like humans. Animals are thought to have facial expressions as well, and remarkably they may experience a wide range of emotions on par with humans. However, we are unable to accurately read their emotions. Humans express themselves not only through facial expressions but also through language, text and behavior; however, except in extremely rare cases, it is difficult to fully understand how animals feel due to the absence of memory. Kobayashi’s heads, on the other hand, depict genuine and truthful emotions. They are similar to but not identical to human faces, resemble but not identical to animal heads but more than anything are psychological heads.
Some personified figures are painted with human-like arms for their legs/forelegs or with the upper half of the body, but mostly only the head dominates the canvas space. Legs/arms are rendered relatively small and the body too is reduced in comparison to the head, indicating that the main subject matter is the human and animal hybrid head. The head is dominated by two large eyes while the rest of the body parts appear to be very small.
The artist primarily used acrylic and oil pastel on canvas for her paintings and colored pencils and oil pastel on objects such as paper and envelopes for her drawings. The majority of Kobayashi’s canvas paintings illustrate heads with or without upper bodies on a monochromatic background whereas her drawings depict not only the head but also the entire body with some English phrases, reminiscent of speech bubbles in comics. The text floats in the margins of the space like the voice of a human-like animal character and it would describe his or her own emotions.
Multiple layers of gesso form a solid and dense monochromatic background behind each head. Although the backdrop and margins may appear to be plain and simple abstract, within it is the time consumed and various processes, layers of paint as well as built-up materials which contribute to the creation of a solid thickness and depth ingrained in the space within them. The single-toned background is occasionally divided into two color planes or depicts a multiple-layered, fluid visual space formed by many rotating lines. The same technique is used on the characters’ heads. As a result, Kobayashi’s work appears simple but has a solid pictorial quality.
Each canvas features a single head. These adorable heads look like a blend of the head of a dog, rabbit or cat and the face of a human and they appear familiar yet strange, adorable yet sorrowful. It is difficult to tell what expressions they are making. It connotes some melancholy, some lightheartedness, cautious and secretive feelings. It is noticeably ironic how a human-like character illustrates the most personal facial expressions of a man from a piece of art. Like a human proxy, each character represents the nuances of all kinds of emotions that one person has. At this point, both the artist and the audience are compelled to emotionally engage, involve and participate. Kobayashi embodies various emotional situations arising from external relationships with others through the character that represents the artist’s identity. The audience can also put themselves in the characters’ psychological situations and empathize or imagine the inevitable emotional ups and downs that life throws at lonely people. And they picture that trajectory.
Maiko Kobayashi’s strange creatures capture a fleeting moment of truly personal and trivial emotions and present them covertly and carefully. The feelings shine through the big face and big eyes rather bitterly. Her work simply and inadvertently resonates patches of delicate feelings that cannot be clearly explained and reminds the viewers that the conflicts and scars from contradictory emotions as well as internal struggles between helplessness and will of life are theirs to endure and cherish.
Park Young-Taik (Professor at Kyonggi University, Art Critic), 2022
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NOUVELLE GARDE DE L’ART CONTEMPORAIN JAPONAIS
Man is nothing more than what he makes of himself…
This quote form Sartre could just as well illustrate Maiko Kobayashi’s work, which deals with existential issues differently than simply offering an escape to some fantasy world.
...For Maiko Kobayashi, action starts with the understanding of other’s feelings, it means being able to relate one’s emotions to those of others.
This is why Maiko Kobayashi features a series of recurring characters depicted as either isolated or in a group in her paintings. We need to look beyond its cute, Kawaii aspect to understand its purpose. The character is a hybrid, half human, half animal. Rabbit, dog or cat, animals intermingle to highlight its humanity, most noticeable in its looks and postures.
What are these creatures? These beings fill her creative space and are the vessels to every human emotion. When we look at her artwork, we are overwhelmed with emotions and each piece becomes an object of fascination. It seems more about sadness and suffering than about joy. The media has been manhandled: the paintings’ edges are ruined, and the drawing paper is torn up then fixed with bandaid like paper – as if to cover a wound. The act of creation is now an act of sympathy.
Her painting technique is rather specific: Maiko Kobayashi first paints a monochrome background over a layer of gesso then she draws her characters. Afterwards, she paints another background erasing the characters so she has to draw them again. She proceeds to repeat this same action as many times as needed for her creatures to seem to appear from the depths of the canvas, as if they were born from the wood itself.
The existential issue is raised once again: “Does existence precede essence?” The viewer’s empathetic gaze upon the creature allows it to reach a new degree of existence it didn’t have otherwise.
The content, at first seemingly trivial, now displays profound philosophical implications, and we’re surprised to find ourselves staring at the artwork, trying to contain our emotions – or not. Once you’ve encountered work by Maiko Kobayashi, it’s not easily forgotten.
Maiko Kobayashi undertook extensive research to achieve the final design of her creatures, including a series of sketches on newsprint during her journey to the United Kingdom. These small bits of paper are on display, pinned to her wall; their shapes vary according to the artist’s whimsy. These sketches are just as many small portrayals, questioning our existence and our ability to get to know others as well as ourselves.
Sophie Cavaliero, 2011