An examination of the quietly observed moment
Frestonian Gallery is delighted to present its first exhibition of new works by Minami Kobayashi (b. 1989), alongside and in dialogue with selected works by Patrick Procktor (1936-2003).
Kobayashi, who now lives and works in London, is a graduate of the Toyko University of the Arts and the School of Art Institute of Chicago. Her work centres on notions of ephemerality, of the fleeting moment and the function of memory.
Patrick Procktor was one of most gifted artists of his generation. A virtuoso talent, he blazed a trail across the London art world in the 60s and 70s.
Kobayashi and Procktor, each sharing a love for the quietly observed moment; the oblique ‘portrait’, also value the peculiar properties of light and form in different places and parts of the world. Procktor observed that the various corners of the globe he visited lent distinct qualities to his painting (“the light in Egypt is violet, in China daffodil, in Venice opalescent”), so too Kobayashi collects and merges the literal and sense memories of her travels into each picture-plane – an interior bedroom scene segues into a parkland from her childhood in Nagoya; the base of the white cliffs of Dover erupt into wild jungle fauna.
In ways entirely distinct but sympathetic to each other, Procktor and Kobayashi define the realities in their beautifully realised scenes according to what feels right to their subjects – studies of humans (and in Kobayashi’s case animals too) that are both specific and universal characters... rendered always with a light touch, but also a depth that reveals an enduring and powerfully communicated tenderness.
Gallery opening times:
Tuesday to Friday: 11am - 6pm
Saturday: Midday - 4pm
