In these times of multiplying media choices, it is not uncommon to find those artists whose interests run to realism tripping the shutters of cameras, while their more introspective contemporariesput brush to canvas, with often grand or abstract results. The painter, after all, works from an inner source of impressions, ideas and emotions, while the photographer creates from concrete subjects found in the environment. The serious still-life painter, it seems, has fallen in the divide.
Which is what makes the exceptional work of Takanobu Kobayashi such a pleasant surprise. About 30 oil paintings and pencil on paper drawings join a single silkscreen print by Kobayashi to make up the exhibition "Seventy-Five Days," a solo show now on at the Nishimura Gallery on Tokyo's Ginza strip.
The 39-year-old artist's subjects are mostly mundane objects taken from his everyday life -- a bathtub, a pillow, cutlery and crockery, a microwave oven. Of course, if one is going to paint one's immediate environment, it helps to be in an inspiring place.