Keisei Kobayashi

Keisei Kobayashi, Eden - Metropolis E/C. Colored wood engraving.

Davidson Galleries is pleased to share new work from Japanese artist Keisei Kobayashi. Featured are five new wood engravings from 2021 and two newly added wood engravings from the 1980s. Kobayashi creates richly detailed wood engravings of the collision between nature and mankind’s excess. His work fluidly transports the viewer through multiple layers of life, from sea to sky to skyscraper. Kobayashi invites tranquility while passionately advocating for coexistence of living beings amidst the cold of urbanity. 

Keisei Kobayashi, Eden - Blooming Forest B/C. Colored wood engraving.

Kobayashi’s new works from the Eden series continue to place mankind securely in the background and emphasize the beauty and harmony of nature. Trees, vines, flowers, and coral overtake buildings which are often the last elements to be seen, far in the distance or high in the sky. Our attention is instead drawn to the animals, the otters who join birds in the sky, or the birds who join otters in the sea –it’s difficult to say where they are – whose elegant movements mirror each other’s. Kobayashi expresses a balance amongst life that goes beyond even ecosystems’ self-regulation. There is a seamless flow from land to sea to sky and back to land; we rise from the soil to the sea’s edge at the horizon, only to find we’re already back in the sky or back in the tree’s roots and the forest has begun to grow again.

Keisei Kobayashi, Eden - Metropolis G. Wood engraving.

In older works like Transmigration No. 3・B (1984), Kobayashi displays a darker view of the future, where manmade materials break through the ecosystem at the bottom of the darkness, where new beginnings struggle against decay, where eggs are both abandoned and home to newly hatched chicks. There is a clear sense of struggle against the human elements which have fallen upon nature. In the Eden series and other new works, Kobayashi expresses a more hopeful view of the future, a belief that our humanity can overcome the dismal state of a strangled nature. We enter a fantastical world where we are reawakened to the equality of life surrounded by ecological splendor.

Keisei Kobayashi, Eden - Metropolis F. Wood engraving.

Keisei Kobayashi (Japanese, b. 1944) was born in Matsue, Japan in 1944. He graduated from the Institute of International Design in Kyoto. He has been a professor at Tama Art University since 1997 and serves as an honorary professor as of 2014. He also serves as the director of the Japan Print Association. Kobayashi is known for his wood engravings that depict the beauty and richness of nature against the excess and decay of modern civilization. His works incorporate layers of sea, sky, forest, and city with flora and fauna infused with both the natural and manmade. A renowned Japanese printmaker and pioneering figure of wood engraving, Kobayashi has represented ecological struggle with a humanistic spirit for decades. He has exhibited extensively internationally, most recently with solo exhibitions at ARDEL Gallery in Bangkok and the Palazzo La Marmora in Biella, Italy. Kobayashi’s work is held in the collections of many Japanese and international institutions, including the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, the British Museum, and the Library of Congress.

Keisei Kobayashi, Transmigration No. 3 - B. Wood engraving.

Please view these new works from Keisei Kobayashi alongside his other works offered by Davidson Galleries on our website here: Collection | Keisei Kobayashi or call/email to make an appointment to view them in person.