Kobayashi's work is both a homage to the art of painting and a sort of denial of the achievements of his predecessors - his fellow painters from bygone days. It pays tribute to the art of painting, yet also seems to destroy painting. When an artist expresses himself through a medium with a longstanding tradition, a medium we are very familiar with, what is at stake is not simply the 'what-and-how-question': the question of 'why’ becomes equally important. The work must contain a certain extent of necessity. The public has to sense that the use of the specific medium is a sine qua non for the artist, that there is more involved than the nostalgic desire to continue the achievements of the great masters of a past era. Necessity and desire become one in this instance. What we are confronted with, is an inner conviction, a compelling urge which cannot be ignored. In the case of Kobayashi, I feel the presence of this urge in the work itself. It had to be, and it has to be like this - in this instance not using a brush, but using fingers and hands, elbows and the entire body. It could not be differently.

Jan Hoet, 2001