Viewers gathered around a corner in the back of a small NYC gallery as artist Maiko Kobayashi painted the words “Don’t escape the pain, face it” on a canvas, while Japanese pop played in the background. Then, in the span of just a few minutes, she smudged out the message in black-and-white paint and covered it with kawaii-anime-style creatures embracing.

The Japanese artist’s first solo exhibition at the GR Gallery in Bowery titled “Be Here, For Sure” opened Saturday, Oct. 7. This exhibition is also Kobayashi’s first in New York, and contains paintings of the creatures that she has been drawing for 20 years. 

A crowd of people packed the gallery to see her paintings and drawings, all featuring variations of a dog or bunny-like creature with soft and simple features. Viewers often describe Kobayashi’s creatures as “cute” or “kawaii,”  but this was never her goal. 

“My intention is neither humans nor animals, just creatures I invented. I didn’t want to paint or draw the shape of a human because human beings have age or sex, and they’re old or young. When I draw something like this creature, I don’t want to think about that kind of element,” she said in an interview. 

Her motivation for painting is one that most of us can understand. “With the news a lot on my mobile phone and the recent events in the world, I think regularly of sad or awful things,” Kobayashi said. She creates art, or more specifically these creatures, to cope with and process the state of the world. 

As viewers witnessed during the live painting, Kobayashi always listens to J-pop while she paints because it teaches her about life. 

Kobayashi has painted in front of an audience on three other occasions and once before at a gallery opening. “It’s very different from painting at my studio. In front of the viewer there’s always a kind of tension from the audience so it’s very exciting.” 

Through the live painting, viewers got a sneak peak into what lies underneath Kobayashi’s creatures.

“Before she created it there was a blank canvas, and then she wrote, ‘Don’t escape the pain, face it.’ And then she painted over with black and white. And she created these two little characters, like holding each other and the paint was dripping down as if they were crying,” gallerygoer Delaney Barrientos said following the performance. 

“I usually write a word or phrase on the canvas, and I don’t want the viewer to read exactly what it is or what it means,” Kobayashi said. 

Though her creatures may be cute, most of them hold a sort of sadness in their eyes and poses. “You can kind of see it in the brushstrokes a little bit,” Barrientos said. “There’s like some kind of anger or some kind of distress going on in the brushstrokes.”

Kobayashi challenges the viewer to peer through the layers to read what’s beneath — but her words are covered up for a reason. 

“What is important is communication between the viewers and my art,” Kobayashi said. She wants her viewers to think about her creatures and write their own message. “I don’t intend to force it at all.”

One painting in this exhibition has the word “Idea” written directly on it, and in the background of another painting there are obvious depictions of violence and anger, but not all of Kobayashi’s paintings are so upfront with their meanings. Other paintings in this series depicted her creatures holding onto a piece of string or simply standing and looking up. Nonetheless, viewers were able to see beyond the kawaii-ness of her characters.

“I feel like this kind of theme occurring with all of these paintings in a way. And it fills me with a lot of, I don’t know, sadness, or desperation,” Barrientos said. “It seems like, with all of these paintings, there’s some kind of problem. There’s some kind of bloodshed going on.” 

“Our world always has sad events, for example, war or an earthquake, or something like fighting between people,” Kobayashi said. “I think we always have the vitality, I believe in people’s vitality when we face difficulties.” 

Kobayashi’s “Be Here, For Sure” exhibition grapples with the state of our world, reflecting feelings and emotions that anyone can relate to. Though the live painting was a one-night event, the piece it created will still be hanging and is worth a visit.
 The exhibition is on view through Oct. 28 at the GR Gallery in Bowery.