Toshiyuki Konishi

Toshiyuki Konishi has continued to paint people with distinctive methodology based on resolutely sweeping away details with bold, strong strokes, even while referencing private records such as group photos and snapshots of family and close friends. Conversations with his grandfather, who was a psychologist, let Konishi to mull over human standards of judgement and human behavior from early childhood. He consequently acquired the point of view needed for taking an objective look at the human species at a young age, and deepened his thought through the act of painting. The human images Konishi paints on canvas with brush, towels, and fingertips are both symbolic and multi-faceted. The big curling and zigzagging strokes he makes accompanied by the physical traces of the acts of smearing pigment on the canvas and then wiping it away upset the balance between space and body, which intertwine. The paintings show the signs of repeated, meticulous thought. Konishi says that he paints the gap between reality and allegory. The human figures he renders as distorted vestiges based on memory seem to be opened up to and in rapport with the outer world. It is as if he has captured the instant when the body and consciousness balloon. Demonstrating extremely high levels of consciousness and sensitivity, Konishi reacts to the ways in which such changes exert an influence on the relationship between the world and our bodies. On the space of canvas, which is free from social media and their glut of images and information, he makes realistic depictions of the changing human mind and body compelled to live with a sense of fragility and uncertainty. By so doing, he produces abstractions of "what is happening now" and prompts us to ponder the future.
In 2016, Konishi is nominated as a finalist for the Prudential Eye Awards.

Submitted by ANOMALY