geboren am 21. August 1964 in Tokio / Japan, entstammt einer japanischen Künstlerfamilie
1985 - 1989 Grundstudium, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste,-Tokio
1989 - 1991 Studium der Malerei am Magisterkurs an der Staatlichen Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Tokio
1991 - 1994 Auslandsstipendium zum Studienaufenthalt in der BRD durch die Kunststiftung der ASAHI Brewery Ltd., Tokio / Japan
1993 - 1994 Studium der Druckgraphik an der Schule für Gestaltung in Basel

1981 1.Preis, Kunstwettbewerb der Kunstschüler, Tokio
1989 Ohashi-Kunstpreis der Kunsthochschule Tokio
1993 Itoh Ren Kunstpreis, Nagoya / Japan
1994 Internationaler Syrlin Kunstpreis, Stuttgart
1995 2.Südwestdeutscher Aquarellpreis, Völklingen

1993 Galerie Triamon, Freiburg i.B. (moderne japanische Malerei)
1994 Galerie Triamon, Freiburg (Schwarzwald-Bilder)
1995 Pavillon Josephine, "Festival Europe-Japon '95" im Parc de l'Orangerie, Straßburg
1996 Galerie Triamon, Freiburg (Ausblicke)
1996 Galerie Triamon, Freiburg (Lichtspiele)
1997 Kunstverein Gundelfingen, Gundelfingen

1990 NW-House Gallery, Tokio / Japan
1993 Art Munich '93, München
1993 1. Karuizawa Biennale für Zeichnungen, Karuizawa / Japan
1993 Itoh Ren Kunstpreis, Nagoya / Japan
1994 1st Exhibition of "Foreign Scholarship Students", Sponsor:ASAHI Breweries Ltd. Tokio / Japan
1994 Internationaler Syrlin Kunstpreis, Stuttgart
1995 2.Südwestdeutscher Aquarellpreis, Völklingen
1995 Dia-Trommel Projekt, Freiburg (Freiburg Percussion Festival)
1996 Kunstpreis Kirn '96 der Stadt Kirn
1996 2 mal Asien in Europa, Galerie Triamon, Freiburg
1996 Salon de Printemps '96, Luxemburg
1996 Dia-Trommel Projekt (Mediale'96), Nürnberg
1997 Salon de Printemps '97, Luxemburg
1997 Kunstverein Gundelfingen e.V., Gundelfingen
1997 "9te Experimentelle Dandegg", Gottmadingen
1998 "10te Experimentelle Randegg", Gottmadingen

An Eastern Abstractionist meets a Western Landscape - Hideaki Yamanobe and his Black-Forest-Paintings
The invention of photography and its development during the last 150 years has caused a creative crisis in the art of painting. The chemi-mechanical technique of fixing the outward appearance of reality has challenged the classical way of representing natural things by figurative works of art. Painters have been called on to the dynamic process of finding another field of expression for their feelings.

In this search for new aesthetic concepts modern artists passed through a permanent revolution of changing, alternating styles guiding them away from the outside world of lifelikeness to the inner space of living, from the surface of existence to its functional substance, from conscious composition to unconscious immediacy, and from the grasping of form to the inspired gesture of structure.

The discovery reached its climax in the provocative works of the European Informal Style and the American Abstract Expressionism. Without any reference to exterior reality the artists of this course of painting intended to create a pictorial reality for itself. They followed merely the energetic and rythmic structure of themselves and theirinterior, mystic-like activity M order to make visible instead of displaying something visible. Painters like WOLS or Pollock revealed directly the ontological abyss of their own existence, excluding or avoiding analogies with nature. Their works look more like a desperate meditation than an unaffected mediation.

Since the beginning of Abstract Expressionism in America Japanese artists have been interested in its development. Kenzo Okada (1902 -1982), the father of abstract painting in the land of the rising sun, kept up close contact to American painters during his long stay in New York in the Fifties, finding a proper and unique approach to their methods and conceptions. In opposition to his American colleagues Okada didn't drop totally nature as an inexhaustible source for artistic statements out of his abstract figurations. To his opinion works of art become only alive when there is a certain kind of "natural breath" in each part and element of the painting. According to Eastern traditions this "natural breath" includes a spiritual dimension which induces the artist to "express himself naturally" by balancing all contrasts and tensions in texture and color and by arranging a cosmic harmony on the canvas. The balancing means not a human invention but an expression of nature itself. Okada ran the blockade of pure abstractionism and restored art to the freedom of "breathing."

Hideaki Yamanobe, born in Tokyo in 1964 as the son of a renowned graphic artist inclining to Surrealism, feels himself obliged to the American way of abstract art as well as to Okada's line. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Tokyo his favorite model first was Cézanne, then Motherwell, Rothko, Gorky, and at least Okada. This succession of legendary masters provided him with a solid craftsmanship in knowing how to paint.

But the progressive part of modem art asks rather for motive and message than for method and making. After finishing Academy Yamanobe therefore was oppressed by the question what shall he paint on his account. From the despair and from the challenge of this fundamental questioning he left japan and went abroad in order to find his authentic theme, his artistic identity.

In Southwest Germany at the borderline to France and Switzerland along the river Rhine there is a peculiar mountain region called "Black Forest", the backbone of the Badenian country. When Yamanobe met this landscape for the first time he immediately felt a strong affinity to its hill-ranges which seemed to correspond to the longings of his aesthetic sentiment. Although there is little resemblance to the landscape in Japan, the myriad firs covering rough cliffs and secluded valleys, the southern sun shining on the dark waves of endless mountain chains, the bright meadows along steep slopes, and the mysterious looking lakes from the glacial epoch let him feel a deep-rooted relationship. AlreadyYarnanobe's first painting after his arrival in Southwest Germany even in its abstract manner shows surrendering suggestions to the Black Forest. Obviously he has found his topic.

Under the influence of his daily impressions Yamanobe transformed his abstract expressionism to fragmental shapes of lucid landscape layers which mediate not only "natural breath" but the vivid and energetic pulsation of mountains represented as the fallen giants of the past. In a series of paintings titled "Hell's Valley" he reveals the tectonic bone-structure of the landscape by a simple arranging of Rothko-like chromatic plains. With an abstract method he achieves a more powerful presence of the dramatic scenery than any naturalistic or even photographic representation is able to do.

In opposite to the rough texture he applies color in a three-dimensional philosophical way. Using either opaque, transparent or semi-transparent coloring he intends to show how changeable things are the painting represents. By this Yamanobe gives space to time m his works which augments the "natural" intercourse between spectator and painting.

The coloring demonstrates also Yamanobe's sensitive compassion on the ecological problems of the region. For example, in the painting tided "Goldwood" the poetical laying on of the colors in its refraction shows the blooming, but vulnerable tenderness of biological balances.
Text by Peter Hank