1998 I
About the exhibition "Norwegian Martyrs"
gradualy known in Japan too. Particularly in this year the gallery's efforts for Søbye are great,
because they organize his solo exhibition twice, following his painting show of children and dolls in
March, his portrait show of adult people in June, and make catalogue with 12 or 13 pages of color prints for each time.
Indeed according to Søbye's letter, because his catalogues made by Toho Gallery are widely appreciated and
desired in Norway too, so he hoped to receive 200 copies of the catalogue for his March show and 200
additionaly printed copies of the catalogue for his last year show, before Norwegian cultural minister
visited his studio in northern district of Norway in March 12th. The gallery sent him requested copies of
the catalogues as free service, in spite of his proposal to pay the necessary budget. Knowing that
Norwegian cultural minister will attend the opening of Munch exhibition at Setagaya Museum in April
4th, I visited there to ask her about her impression of Søbye's personality and works. But when I went to
reception place, after listening her short speech and looking around Munch's works, she has gone out of
the museum already. Above all, the fact that Søbye's exhibition of June is not included in the program of
"Art Festival of Norwegian Kingdom in Japan" until Nagano winter Olympiad, which is given us at that
time, is to see as her answer.
I do'nt know if Søbye showed or notto the cultural minister his works for the exhibition of June which he had to
send out to Japan several days later, but since he gave the title "Norwegian Martyrs" to this exhibition, the
minister probably could not include it into the art festival of the kingdom. However from Søbye's point of
view, this is the very origin of his campaigns continued as "Inferno" "Requem" "Civil War" and "Amnesia" in Japan, so unchangeable themes. Because as Søbye has written in his text for this catalogue, he
sympathizes with Walter Benjamin's thought, that the truth is within veiled, invisible fragments of
individual stories. Furthermore there is such a phrase in Benjamin's works, though the history has been
written always by the winner's point of view, the truth is seen only from eyes of the anonymous
defeaters shut out from society. Although Søbye gazes the fate of human beings globally, for instance just
after the sarin affair in Tokyo subway, he sent me a faximile that such indiscriminate terrorism looks to
him as a symptom of the catastrophy of contemporary civilization, his base is of course in Norwegian
suppressed people where he lives. Considering that his exhibited works will be difficult to
understand for Japanese audience not well informed about Norwegian domestic circumstances, Søbye
sent us his long text including explanations of his models for the catalogue. According to it, we can
understand the reason why are there 5 portraits of Arnold Juklerød, from Søbye's admiring to this
indomitable resistant against psychiatric institutions, but to my surprise this dead person was the same age
with myself. Here are included unusually three portraits of suppressors, two psychiatric authorities
and one aristocrat, landlord. Does this mean, since they supported a wing of the power
systems, they must have been servants of that systems? The other models are a communist municipal council, an
abandoned war-hero and now alcoholiced tramp, a descendant of Finnish refugee, a Gypsy woman, a
Jewish young woman from survived parents through German invasion and at last the artist himself as a
witness of everything.
All these portraits aim at not copies of personal appearances, but through the outside into the aim, Søbye depicts
pupils, eye sockets, shapes and colours of hair, wrinkles and specks painstakingly, and uses real clothes on
parts of costumes and backgrounds like collages, furthermore paints on covers of plexiglasses. These
paintings appeal us many things, even without knowing about the careers of models, but after we
know them, must shake us more deeply.