Year: 2022
Medium: bed, linen, oil paint, turntable, record, guitar amplifier, timer
Dimensions: 210 x 126 x 102 cm (82 5/8 x 49 5/8 x 40 1/8 in.)
Acquired from Void+, 2022
This work consists of too much texture to be called a painting. It is based on the famous performance “Bed-in for Peace” that John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged. Mitobe’s paintings are created through the literal act of grabbing the motif as the subject matter. The act of painting is generally accomplished with the use of a paintbrush (sometimes with explosives, feet or fists, etc.), and artists who respect the form of painting are conscious of a certain degree of two-dimensional flatness. This work, however, exhibits no planarity as the bed is not even horizontally stretched out. Despite this work greatly deviating from a typical painting, it is obvious that something has been “painted”. This is not only because the art medium is oil paint. The fact that a subject matter is being served as motif, this work has come to stand on its own as a result of sincerity in depiction. The works of Robert Rauschenberg, who share the same generation with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, are described as “Flatbed Picture Plane”. Deviated from vertically elevated paintings, Rauschenberg turned the painting horizontally as an expression of anti-art. In this work, Mitobe attempts to shift the revolutionary act even further by inverting it. Consequently, this work can be regarded as a revival of paintings from pre-modernism era through modernism to contemporary art.
