The Visceral Glitch, Kenta Cobayashi

In 2016, the first volume of Everything was published by New Fave, a series that Kenta Cobayashi would diligently update on a daily basis with photos of everyday life. It was this publication that has been credited with launching his career, going on to collaborate with brands including Louis Vuitton and Dunhill and to exhibit at major international institutions. 

Born in 1992, in Kanagawa, Japan, artist Kenta Cobayashi is now based in Tokyo and Shonan. Kenta Cobayashi has developed a prolific practice straddling both the artistic and commercial spheres. According to his publisher, ‘Kenta Cobayashi’s work is characterized by vestigial digital traces applied onto his images via computer software as a painter adorns a canvas, a form of “tagging” that serves as testament to his existence.’

Technology, art, life

The publication offers a window onto the artist’s prolific production, his photographic practice defying categorisation or even the borders of discipline. The visceral glitch aesthetic of his work is a testament to Kenta Cobayashi’s intense interest in technology, and its relationship to art, life, and image culture. 

Eminently contemporary and meticulously examining the zeitgeist, Kenta Cobayashi not only interrogates a historical moment, but keeps up with it too, pushing the boundaries of technological capabilities and the society that they interact with. In recent years, he has collaborated with fashion brands and entered into a genre-defying project with a computer programmer, all while maintaining his own personal practice. Four years after the first, the second volume of his series was released, Everything_2, which ‘investigates the photographer’s generational cohort, revealing the lifestyles of youths across Tokyo to the world’s metropolises.’

Everything_1 (2016), a series by Kenta Cobayashi, is published by New Fave.