KOBAYASHI Takanobu was born in Tokyo, 1960. He graduated from Aichi Prefectural University in 1986. Toward from 1980's to 1990's, he made a number of paintings of a submarine wandering alone in different daily scenes, in which the subject was a metaphor to the state of his mind feeling and observing the world in solitude. In the “Mito Annual'95－Discover Paintings; works & language”, he showed the series of paintings creating the scenes in the play of sunlight through the trees. Those works were highly applauded by the critics and the public. In 1996, he won the Encouragement Prize in the Vision of Contemporary Art (VOCA) competition, and later in the year Kobayashi's first solo exhibition at the Nishimura Gallery was held. After 1999, he started to live and to work both in Tokyo and Bangkok, Thailand. The environment of Thailand led him to find new subjects, and to evolve his distinctive expression of glowing light. The fruits of the evolvement are seen in “Small Death” series (2001-2002), or “Sunbather” series (2003-2004). In 2004, his solo exhibition “Kobayashi Takanobu － Endless Summer” was held in the Meguro Museum of Art, Tokyo. In 2006, a series of close-up faces titled “Portrait” was shown in the solo exhibition at the Nishimura Gallery. The exhibition “Horizons-Perspective of Contemporary Painting” was held in the beginning of this year at the Tokyo Station Gallery, two of his new paintings, “Pillow” and “Path in the Forest” were shown. The large painting over five meters representing a sleeping figure, “Dream, Dreaming us” is now exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. This solo exhibition will show his new works containing 11 paintings and 5 drawings, which are in the theme of light movement through day and night. “River Bank” shows a bank in the morning sunlight. “Electric Torch” depicts a dim light held by a shadowy figure standing in a dark forest, and “Root” is a scene of a man sitting back on a tree in the playing sunlight. In these works, the light shows many different characters in various times and situations, but it always casts quietly and softly, and from the midst of which, with his use of tidy geometries and thick uniform paints, Kobayashi raises out strong solid presence of the motives. Kobayashi’s quest has been intent for the feeling of presence in relation with the light. In this exhibition, you will see the finest conclusion that he has reached. Kobayashi's paintings are collected by many museums such as the National Museum of Art, Osaka, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Ohara Museum of Art, Okayama, Takamatsu City Museum of Art, Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Fine Arts, Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito, Ibaraki and Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art etc. * The text provided by Nishimura Gallery