The Colors That Keep the World from Ending

Born in 1995 in Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan, and raised in Iwakura, Aichi Prefecture, Kiichiro Kobayashi spent his childhood surrounded by fields and small animals. From an early age, he loved drawing and dreamed of becoming a painter who would one day hold solo exhibitions.In 2005, after experiencing school refusal triggered by bullying, he transferred to an elementary school in Nagoya. During this period, he encountered Buddha by Osamu Tezuka, which deepened his interest in artistic expression and spirituality.In 2007, he joined a live-in workshop at the studio of Buddhist sculptor Myoukei Matsumoto, where he learned fundamental techniques such as sculptural ornamentation. Although he once aspired to become a Buddhist sculptor, he chose to pursue a broader range of artistic expression through fine art.In 2011, he moved to Tokyo with his family and enrolled in the Fine Arts Course at Hoyu Gakuin High School (predecessor of TSA). While reflecting on differences in political views and systems of values, he became interested in how the same event can be perceived differently depending on one’s standpoint. At that time, his work focused on revealing hidden aspects of a single subject.In 2014, he entered Musashino Art University, Faculty of Art and Design, Department of Oil Painting. Alongside painting, he explored performance and mixed media. In 2015, he created a performance work, its documentation, and costume centered on the death of his older brother, and received a university award. Although he experimented beyond painting, he returned to it for his graduation project.In 2018, he completed Real Clothes I–III. Combining fabric dyed with pixel data extracted from photographs and images drawn from observation, he explored multiple aspects of a single subject as well as relationships among memory, perception, materials, and process. The method established through this project—using dyed fabric as a support and drawing directly onto it—became a foundation for his subsequent painting practice. His graduation work also led to an approach from a commercial gallery in Tokyo about joining its roster of artists. However, having already decided on another path, he chose instead to apprentice at a Buddhist painting and kirikane workshop, where he remained for several months.In 2020, while working at a call center, The Rooster was selected as a finalist for the 22nd Graphic “1_WALL.” Focusing on differences between human and avian color perception, the work examined how different perceivers experience different worlds.He held his first solo exhibition, Me and the Caterpillar, at SHINBI GALLERY in 2021, followed by Beautiful Gamers at Gallery Space Kurage in 2022.In 2023, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and continued drawing throughout his hospitalization. Rather than treating this diagnosis as an explanation for his work, he regards it as an experience that fundamentally transformed his artistic thinking. Together with earlier experiences of conflicting perspectives in human relationships and his study of philosophy, it led him to shift his focus from exploring multiple aspects of a single reality to investigating how different experienced worlds emerge through different perceivers.Currently, through paintings—including works drawn on dyed fabric—as well as drawing and digital media, he draws on personal memories, dreams, and lived experiences to explore how meaning, judgment, and a sense of reality are formed. Through restrained lines and colors, material choices, and repetition, he gives visual form to worlds constituted through perception.