Galerie Claude Lemand

PORTRAITS OF THE-NON-EXISTENT-BIRD - MANABU KOCHI.
Claude Lemand.

Born in Okinawa, Japan, in 1954, artist Manabu Kochi com­pleted his studies at the School of Fine Arts of Florence and set­tled in France in 1981. A sculptor, painter and engraver, Kochi suc­ceeded in devel­oping his own per­sonal uni­verse that merges Primitive Art with the most inno­va­tive and pos­i­tive modern European trends. His œuvre is full of phi­los­ophy and humour, and of colour and har­mony.

Ever since we first met back in December 1988, I was seduced by Manabu Kochi’s sculp­tures and paint­ings. The fig­ures of the bird already fea­tured in his works. They were then going to develop into sev­eral sculp­tures, paint­ings on canvas, on paper and slate, engrav­ings and orig­inal lithographs. Kochi trans­lated into Japanese Claude Aveline’s poem enti­tled Portrait de l’Oiseau-Qui-N’Existe-Pas and included it in his painted books in France and in his pub­li­ca­tions in Japan.

Kochi’s birds are beings that are real and imag­i­nary, earth­ling, aerial and cosmic, painted with bright colours and in black and white. They fly over cities, seas and lands; standing on their legs, they pay close atten­tion to the out­side world and they think; they are solo, in a couple or form a family. The artist says, « I found inspi­ra­tion in this poem that talks about the reason of being of the human exis­tence. Becoming a real bird is to find one­self, to know one­self and to build one’s own iden­tity ».