|
|
|
|
Artist Statement:
The prevailing attitude in
modern culture is that every
individual is a world in
his/her own right, a world
from which all other's are
excluded. This is a major lie.
The truth is that we are each
other's world and each other's
destiny. Under normal
circumstances...
Further Information
| |
Artist Exhibitions:
One-man exhibitions:
"The Dark Forest", Toho
Gallery, Tokyo, Japan 2006
The 1rst Oddabiennale and
Norwegian State Museum for
Hydropower and Industry 2004
"Last Defence", Toho Gallery,
Tokyo, Japan 2003
"Inferno", Toho Gallery,
Tokyo, Japan 1994
"Requiem", Toho Gallery,
Tokyo, Japan 1995
"Civil war",Toho Gallery,
Tokyo, Japan 1996
"Amnesia...
Further Information
|
|
Artist Galleries:
My Galleries:
Roenland Gallery, Oslo, Norway
Tonne Gallery, Oslo, Norway,
Toho Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
...
Further Information
|
|
|
|
Collections:
Represented in following
museums and public collections
(selected):
Nagoya City Art Museum
Isahai Museum,
Japan
Aichi Prefectural Museum,
Nagoya, Japan
Collection Sagawa Printing,
Japan
The Norwegian National Gallery
The Norwegian State Cultural
Society
The State Museum of
Contemporary Art (Southern
Norway)
The State Museum of
Contemporary Art (Northern
Norway)
The ...
Further Information
|
|
Commissions:
Boxheart Gallery, Pittsburgh,
USA
Toho Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
...
Further Information
|
|
|
Reviews for Reinhardt Soebye:
|
|
|
"We are told that he is "self-educated", without any formal art education.
However, the exceptional insight that we detect in his art and the ability to
penetrate into the depth of existential aspects of humanity and into the
civilisation, tell us that his talent is an innate one and a gift of God."
From : Geiiutsu Shincho , an artjournal in Japan. April 1994.
"It is calm, but intence message from Norwegian artist Sobye born in 1956,
who has beginned to paint as if received a revelation since 1982.
This is inner scream, wail.
Properly galleries should discover such artists.
This is probably one of the best exhibitions in (Japan) 1994."
Editorial note "Art Top" 1994. No 140
"Exhibited 16 works inn all, but all works were sold outwithin the first week, in spite of such severe subjects, and the title "Inferno".
What means this fact indeed? Doesn't it show us the proper function ofeminent painting?
Even in this financial depression age, no, because of this very depression age, people's true desire is neither goods of famous brands nor works adequate for interior, but plastic expression made by "nonverbal lana,uage" flowed out from human souls living always sincerely. His works proved it splendidly.
It's a pity, but this exhibition is until today. I am writing now, hoping this newspaper arrive to you as soon as possible and you go to the gallery immediately. I am writing with such heated and bouncing soul, after a long absence, and it is the very power of his art. I hope for this artist's next exhibition in Japan."
Teshihiko Wasio, Komei Newspaper Feb. 26. 1994
Without the title 'Head of Christ , it cannot be changed that the work would
be persuasive as a masterpiece. At any rate, this is a rare work in presenting
this much reality of Christ's face.
I even thought of the possibility that the piece would leave behind its name
on art history."
Review from Summer Issue, 1994 Quarterly Poetry Magazine "Fune"
Reinhardt Sobye Exhibition: Requiem
Under the Eschatological Phenomena
By Toshihiko Washio
Next, how were gallery shows (in Japan 1995)? Prevailing airs have still been recessional. Symptoms for a change for the better could not be seen. Among the very limited number of original exhibitions were the following 2 individual shows that deserved to be seen, timely to this eschatological age. They stood out like a light house in the darkness-"Reinhardt Sobye's Exhibition: 'requiem" at Toho Gallery (June 5-24), and "Hiroshi Kariya Exhibition" at Mizuma Art Gallery (June 8-July 22).
............ 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 .
Art Critical File: 6th Installment
Review from September Issue 1995. Art Journal.
........ 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."
Excerps from a 15 pages essay: Series 27th Installment: ABORTED VISIONS
Thoughts on "I can neither see nor read the Face."
ASAHI SHIMBUN (Evening edition)
Date: 18 July 1996
Reinhardt Sobye. Norwegian painter born in 1956. This is his 3rd exhibition in Japan and is entitled "Civil War". The basic techniques used are gouache and cravon, with some pictures including collaged material and coloured glass laid over the surface. Over 10 pictures are on displav where the themes are mostiv portrait and countrv landscapes. In short, they are incredibly powerful paintings. A feature of this artist's work is the wav he concentrates in fine detail on a particular point in the picture. He is able to express hope or anxiety in an old woman's face by emphasising subtle differentiations of wrinkles around the eyes and lips. The feel of war permeates the portraits and landscapes. Particularlv the eyes haunt the viewer, whether they are looking straight at you or away, or looking inwards to their own souls. The eyes of the "Serbian Deserter" are empty and glazed. We are made aware of the abstract state of the deserter's mind, as if he has seen things he should never have witnessed and in turn, making us aware of his deadly serious situation, without a word having been spoken.
The pictures are not a propaganda campaign of anti-war. They are beyond such self evident slogans but they are a statement of "War is necessary in order to live" as is written in the catalogue. The painting represents, no more and no less, the absurdity of "Civil War". Viewers are reminded that War is never far away or they mav even recognise the nature of War in themselves. Yes, Art still wields so much power even today.
(Editorial Staff, Sanzo Tanaka)
Do you have the courage to come face to face with these children and dolls?
03 - 22 March
Toho Garo gallery ( Kyobashi, Tokyo)
The Artist and His Works
The exhibition consisted of 13 paintings, 10 of which were purchased already during the exhibition's opening day.
The Norwegian painter Reinhard Sobye made his debut in Japan 4 years ago. This is his 4th solo exhibition and his works have captured the interest of Japanese collectors. There has always been a thirst for this expression of fine art. People of our times have become mentally twisted through social pressures and have lost direction. Through the portraits of these people, he expresses strong accusations against ourmodern times.
In this exhibit, he focused on children and dolls wherein reside "angels" who were trodden on and sacrificed for Man's ego and insanity. These are sad, abandoned dolls covered in our Society's blood. However, Sobye does not merely paint a picture of atrocity. One can hear a prayer for salvation behind the tableau. With the prayer echoingin our mind, we cannot help but be moved in some way.
Sobye was born in 1956 in Oslo. He studied psychology at the University, but quit just before the graduate examination and started painting.
It is incredible but it is said that he is totally selftaught in painting.
Suggested price of paintings at the gallery : mostly at and above NOK 60.000.-
Dead Doll in Belgium" 1996:Crayon, gouache on paper 103.5 x 85.2 cm
"Nocturne" 1996:Crayon, gouache on paper 11 1.5 x 88,5 cm
(Translated from the Japanese art magazine NIKKEI ART June 1997)
REFERENCE FORM/LETTER OF AFFILIATION
Comments
The said applicant has a long career as a painter and some of his works belong to also some of the national museums of art in Norway. Also in Japan, 6 one-man exhibitions were shown in the last 4 years and his works are highly evaluated and loved by many. He is fully qualified for the said project.
The said applicant is a painter who paints a portrait and natural features (a landscape)in a uniquely realisticway, and that is characteristic of him. His works are so unprecedented that they have been stimulating a lot the Japanese modern art.
This very person will stav and work not in Scandinavia, but in Asia, in Japan where his works have been already highly evaluated, so that a success of this project is promised. This success will be not only for him but also for Japan because it is Japan that he paints in this Scandinavian unique realism.Such a trial helps a lot for a progress of cultural and personal exchange between Japan and Scandinavia, and should be considered very important.
Date November 21st 1997 Signature:
Shigeo Chiba (chief curator of The Japan National Museum of Modern Art)
Nihon Keizai Shimbun, June 23 1999, morning edition
Portraits of Suffering and Resignation The Reinhardt Sobye exhibition
Whoever views the work of the contemporary Norwegian painter Reinhardt Sobye must be prepared to feel uncomfortable. Perfectly ordinary portraits though they seem at first sight, they show no trace of idealization. The expressions of their subjects, rather, exude a sense of suffering, loneliness, and resignation; even their seemingly mild gaze harbors a troubling light that transfixes the viewer.
Born in Oslo in 1956, the artist has held annual one-man exhibitions in Japan for the pas t five years. The present exhibition is a retrospective placing on show 57 works painted between 1992 and last year. The gloomy, unsettling images may recall the painter's compatriot Munch, but lack the burning sense of life peculiar to the latter. The gaze that Sobje turns on humanity is dryly dispassionate.
The faces are oddly distorted, the wrinkles especially emphasized. Their gaze is either vacant or over-keen. The works on which the artist has stuck pieces of real old clothes have an odd sense of reality to life, so that one almost suspects them of being malicious. However, this negative impression is counterbalanced by the artist's empathy with his subjects that one glimpses from time to time; what is strange is that even the most disturbing of the portraits has a kind of dignity.
Most of the works, apparently, depict society's underprivileged. The picture of clothing wom by inmates of the concentration camps, and landscapes such as "From the forsaken country I and ir' and "The desolate farm" will give a good idea of where the artist's interests lie. Painstakingly, he paints such themes, with their overridingly tragic overtones, with an outstanding realistic skill.
Unrestricted by ideas of art for art's sake, the artist tackles his down-to-earth motifs head-on. It is an approach that Japanese artists, even today, when more than a century has passed since they first began to learn from Western art, have yet to master. The exhibition continues until the 27th at the Odakyu Art Museum in Tokyo, then travels to the Shimonoseki Art Museum and the Kariya Municipal Art Museum.
Tokyo Shimbun, June evening edition (? 1999)
Anguished Expressions, the Pricelessness of Life -
".....Sobye is an artist who portrays the souls of the tormented. Still more, though, the essence of his art lies in crystallizing the essential value and purity of life in such a way as to brush aside considerations of abstract "messages." He is a type of artist that one does not find in Japan."
An Unvarnished View of the Raw Realities of the Age The Reinhardt Sobye Exhibition
In both style and subject matter Reinhardt Sobye is, it seems to me, far removed from contemporary taste.
The mainstreams of painting today lie in the abstract, the fanciful and the expressionistic. Sobye, on the other hand, sticks firmly to traditional realism, The contemporary art world, moreover, is interested primarily in embodying concepts that nobody ever thought of embodying before, whereas almost all Sobye's work falls within the field of portrait painting, which has has been around for centuries already.
And yet, in spite of this - or perhaps, precisely because of it - Reinhardt Sobye, I feel, is an artist who both represents the present and is likely to survive into the future....."
Miyahiko Miki (film critic) from AKAHATA, “Red Flag” Date=? 1999.
|
|
send an email
