Toho Gallery Tokyo 1995, "Requiem"
Undertegnede blir sammenliknet med Holbein, Gericault (his madmen) og de
diskuterer begrepet "realisme" ved å gå inn på hvilken samfunnsmessig avspeiling
som ligger i mine portretter, og videre
....... hvorfor slik kunst ikke skapes i Japan.
"Inner images coming up from each face, including that of Self-portrait, ate
in viewer's hearts. For example, My Eyes Are Still In The World touched me very
much."
Reinhardt Sobye Exhibition: Requiem
Under the Eschatological Phenomena
By Toshihiko Washio
............ I hear his wish to live, in these works
embodying on canvas the uneasyness or fear spread on his native Norway,-or in
the whole of Europe, or on the Earth. He is probably the very Artist who is like
a canary confined in the absurd cage of today's world. His individual realistic
expression, coming from deep inside, naturally takes shape; it does not take
shape through superficial drawing of form. Such a prominent quality will not
lose its own brilliancy in the future as long as the "canary" is not suffocated
by the lack of oxygen in our society .
Review from September Issue 1995. Art Journal.
... .However , his works were unexpectedly so favorably received that the
show period was prolonged. All the exhibits were sold out. Sobye has shown
through these exhibits a indescribably' vehemnt deploration against today's
established society and etichs; War, terrorism, drugs, the butchering of poor
children from the Third World for the sale of their internal organs on the
Western donor market, etc. He emphasizes that artists should play the role of a
canary in the mine pit to tell df such evils to contemporary people. Eventually,
the unexpectedly large number of visitors indicated thait many Japanese people
have sympathized with the catharsis felt from his art. .,. ........ Gallery
owner Yosinori Nakaoka says, "Where could we find art describing an origin of
human expressions, other than these works," and continued, "Customers who bought
Sobye's works included those who were not satisfied at all with-current
popular paintings, and those who wanted to gaze at the inner
part of their minds through Sobye's art.
....Cosmopolitan cities were full of jumbled noises this year. On a gloomy day
in the rainy season, I visited Toho Gallery this year, too, to se Norwegian
painter Reinhardt Sobye's work dedicated to a "requiem as a noise" (poet Takashi
Tujii). I wrote "this year, too, because I met with his work for the first time
at the same gallery last year, which electrified me and gave me a clue to
thinking about "face".
........ His realistic paintings, which probably could not be produced
without the circumstanse of this greatly noisy and complicated world, have
represented an existential world. ....... Visiting his show, I was
overwhelmingly excited with the first apperance of such painter as Sobye, rare
to the Japanese art scene, from a country that produced Munch. He-has suceeded
in capturing man's agony on canvas, whose expressive quality was close to that
of Munch. .......... Self-portrait" should be nothing but the portrait of the
contemporary society destroyed by the disease of civilization.
...... Human feelings or expression must be as such."
Thoughts on "I can neither see nor read the Face."
Aug/Sept Issue No 1-48.
Geijutsu Shinbunsha