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Project N 91 Saori Kobayashi
Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery
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Artists
Saori Kobayashi
Saori Kobayashi draws colors, shapes, and scenes that come to her when she hears music on a staff. The various colored bands and lines created with pen, acrylic paint, watercolor, and sometimes collage undulate, intertwine, overlap, and separate on the staff, while the various shapes line up and play between them, as if in rhythm.
Kobayashi began making score drawings around 2015. At the time, Kobayashi was working part-time while playing in a band after graduating from college. In the economically and mentally unstable situation of working part-time, the music seemed to be a source of emotional support. For Kobayashi, who had always had beautiful images of various colors and shapes in his mind when he heard music since childhood, listening to his favorite music with headphones on was a time to enjoy the beautiful world inside himself, separate from reality. On the other hand, Kobayashi felt a sense of regret that such a beautiful world inside him was being lost without anyone knowing about it, so she began to draw images from his mind in a notebook he purchased at a stationery store. The inner world that had been closed off was thus opened up to the outside world.
The fact that colors and shapes come to mind when one hears sounds can be described as a "synesthetic" experience caused by the overlap of hearing and sight, which would normally have been distinguished as two separate senses. The term "synesthesia" is defined in modern psychology as an objectively observable phenomenon in which the stimulus input of one sense is translated into the response of another sense. Historically, on the other hand, the phenomenon of synaesthesia itself has been used in a more loose sense, including associations and the intentional creation of images based on them [*01]. There are many examples of synaesthetic creations in which the visual art of art and the auditory art of music intersect. For example, the 20th-century painters Kandinsky and Klee aimed for pure abstraction by incorporating the rhythm and harmony of music into their paintings. Conversely, music may have been composed with inspiration from works of art. Kobayashi's score drawings can also be described as synesthetic expressions that combine sounds with colors and shapes, but in Kobayashi's case, one characteristic is that he faithfully draws on paper the individual colors and shapes that accompany the sounds in the piece, rather than drawing images that are vaguely associated with the piece as a whole. The title of the work is often what one hears.
The title of the work is often the title of a piece of music that the artist has heard. The staves serve as a timeline, and one piece of music, from the beginning to the end, is contained on a single sheet of paper. In the early days, she used ready-made stave notes, but recently she sometimes paints on other supports, in which case the staves are drawn by Kobayashi. Generally, painting and sculpture are distinguished as spatial arts, while literature, poetry, and music are temporal arts, but Kobayashi's score drawings, by introducing stave notation, incorporate elements of time width and movement animatedly while maintaining the spatial expanse of a single painting. The visual representation of music with a period along a timeline is a method of notation, as the name "score" implies.
However, the main focus of Kobayashi's score drawings is not to translate sound into color or form, per se. She began to draw because music, more than anything else, has always been close to her. The music chosen is inseparable from the personal memories and thoughts she had while listening to it. Kobayashi herself says, "It was not just a visualization of sound, but a record of my inner world" [*02]. The work shown in this exhibition, "The View of Sound in Me," was first presented at the exhibition "Plurality of Narrative" held at the Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery in 2021. In this work, Kobayashi depicted the sounds of everyday life around him during the pandemic. The sounds depicted are not only musical compositions, but also the sounds of insects heard on a walk, or the snoring of a partner, etc. The accumulation of sounds heard day by day, at the end of each day, eventually reached a length of 28 meters. Kobayashi's score drawings began as she immersed herself in her inner world, away from reality, and in this work, she listens carefully to the real world around her and lovingly scoops it up.
In her paintings, which she describes as "visualizations of sounds and memories that exist only 'inside' me and will disappear before anyone knows about them unless I leave them somewhere" [*03], each piece of sound she depicts appears to be a carefully collected illustrated book or specimen of a plant or mineral. However, they are by no means static, but rather vibrant and radiant, as if each has a life of its own.
[*01] Hiromiki Makabe, "'Synesthesia': Why has it attracted people?: An overview of the history of research and practice," Art and Music: In Search of a New Synesthesia [exhibition catalog], Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2012, pp. 160-176.
[*02]Saori Kobayashi, Kyoichi Tsuzuki [Discussion], "Art and Music, You Can Continue Both," Art Collectors, June 2023, p. 18.
[*03]Saori Kobayashi, "ARTISTS' NARRATIVES," [catalog] Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, Tokyo, 2022, p. 87
Kobayashi began making score drawings around 2015. At the time, Kobayashi was working part-time while playing in a band after graduating from college. In the economically and mentally unstable situation of working part-time, the music seemed to be a source of emotional support. For Kobayashi, who had always had beautiful images of various colors and shapes in his mind when he heard music since childhood, listening to his favorite music with headphones on was a time to enjoy the beautiful world inside himself, separate from reality. On the other hand, Kobayashi felt a sense of regret that such a beautiful world inside him was being lost without anyone knowing about it, so she began to draw images from his mind in a notebook he purchased at a stationery store. The inner world that had been closed off was thus opened up to the outside world.
The fact that colors and shapes come to mind when one hears sounds can be described as a "synesthetic" experience caused by the overlap of hearing and sight, which would normally have been distinguished as two separate senses. The term "synesthesia" is defined in modern psychology as an objectively observable phenomenon in which the stimulus input of one sense is translated into the response of another sense. Historically, on the other hand, the phenomenon of synaesthesia itself has been used in a more loose sense, including associations and the intentional creation of images based on them [*01]. There are many examples of synaesthetic creations in which the visual art of art and the auditory art of music intersect. For example, the 20th-century painters Kandinsky and Klee aimed for pure abstraction by incorporating the rhythm and harmony of music into their paintings. Conversely, music may have been composed with inspiration from works of art. Kobayashi's score drawings can also be described as synesthetic expressions that combine sounds with colors and shapes, but in Kobayashi's case, one characteristic is that he faithfully draws on paper the individual colors and shapes that accompany the sounds in the piece, rather than drawing images that are vaguely associated with the piece as a whole. The title of the work is often what one hears.
The title of the work is often the title of a piece of music that the artist has heard. The staves serve as a timeline, and one piece of music, from the beginning to the end, is contained on a single sheet of paper. In the early days, she used ready-made stave notes, but recently she sometimes paints on other supports, in which case the staves are drawn by Kobayashi. Generally, painting and sculpture are distinguished as spatial arts, while literature, poetry, and music are temporal arts, but Kobayashi's score drawings, by introducing stave notation, incorporate elements of time width and movement animatedly while maintaining the spatial expanse of a single painting. The visual representation of music with a period along a timeline is a method of notation, as the name "score" implies.
However, the main focus of Kobayashi's score drawings is not to translate sound into color or form, per se. She began to draw because music, more than anything else, has always been close to her. The music chosen is inseparable from the personal memories and thoughts she had while listening to it. Kobayashi herself says, "It was not just a visualization of sound, but a record of my inner world" [*02]. The work shown in this exhibition, "The View of Sound in Me," was first presented at the exhibition "Plurality of Narrative" held at the Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery in 2021. In this work, Kobayashi depicted the sounds of everyday life around him during the pandemic. The sounds depicted are not only musical compositions, but also the sounds of insects heard on a walk, or the snoring of a partner, etc. The accumulation of sounds heard day by day, at the end of each day, eventually reached a length of 28 meters. Kobayashi's score drawings began as she immersed herself in her inner world, away from reality, and in this work, she listens carefully to the real world around her and lovingly scoops it up.
In her paintings, which she describes as "visualizations of sounds and memories that exist only 'inside' me and will disappear before anyone knows about them unless I leave them somewhere" [*03], each piece of sound she depicts appears to be a carefully collected illustrated book or specimen of a plant or mineral. However, they are by no means static, but rather vibrant and radiant, as if each has a life of its own.
[*01] Hiromiki Makabe, "'Synesthesia': Why has it attracted people?: An overview of the history of research and practice," Art and Music: In Search of a New Synesthesia [exhibition catalog], Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2012, pp. 160-176.
[*02]Saori Kobayashi, Kyoichi Tsuzuki [Discussion], "Art and Music, You Can Continue Both," Art Collectors, June 2023, p. 18.
[*03]Saori Kobayashi, "ARTISTS' NARRATIVES," [catalog] Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery, Tokyo, 2022, p. 87
Schedule | Jul 6 (Thu) 2023-Sep 24 (Sun) 2023 Opening Hours Information
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| Fee | Adults ¥1400; University and High School Students ¥800; Junior High School Students and Under, Persons with Disability Certificates + 1 Companion free. | ||||||
| Website | https://www.operacity.jp/ag/exh/detail.php?id=291 | ||||||
| Venue | Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery http://www.operacity.jp/en/ag/ | ||||||
| Location | 3-20-2 Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 163-1403 | ||||||
| Access | 3 minute walk from the East exit of Hatsudai Station on the Keio New line, 11 minute walk from Sangubashi Station on the Odakyu Odawara line, 12 minute walk from exit A2 at Nishi-shinjuku-gochome Station on the Toei Oedo line. | ||||||
| Phone | 050-5541-8600 (Hello Dial) | ||||||
| Related images | Click on the image to enlarge it |
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