ROBERT KOBAYASHI Searching for a Fast-food Restaurant Out There (American Landscape No. 5), 2006 ceiling tin, paint, nails on wood 17 x 18 x 2 inches Price: $3,500 Courtesy of the artist

Robert Kobayashi was born in 1925 in Honolulu, Hawai‘i and was educated in Honolulu; Paris; and the Brooklyn Museum of Art School, NY, under the instruction of Robert Ferren. He uses raw tin, painted tin, and textured ceiling tin that he cuts into intricate strips or large shapes and then embosses with tattoos of nails onto two and three-dimensional wooden armatures—the works becoming resonant collages. He has an affinity for simplifying forms whose dimensions are empowered by his use of bold colors creating vivid and expressionistic tin work. His paintings and sculpture depict intriguing still-lifes and figures that reveal a sophisticated vision, and an innovative spirit that continually defies expectation.

His work has been included in exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Contemporary Museum at First Hawaiian Center, Honolulu, HI; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Nassau County Museum of Fine Art, Roslyn, NY. He was a recipient of a fellowship from the John Hay Whitney Foundation, NY. He wrote and illustrated a children’s book, Maria Mazaretti Loves Spaghetti, for the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1991. Robert Kobayashi’s works are in public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Nassau County Museum, Roslyn, NY; and the Prudential, New Jersey.
(Excerped from Phyllis Stigliano Gallery website).