PCN Art Brut Series No. 44, Artwork Description

The central motif of Kon's work is the human face.Eyes, noses, and mouths are depicted within the outlines of various shapes such as circles or squares.Some faces have no noses while others have bangs.The facial expressions of the mouths also vary, with some appearing to smile with their teeth showing.Although the faces are facing forward, their orientation in relation to the picture axis is not uniform.They are also painted in various sizes.These unique faces are spaced out in some parts and layered on top of one another in others.According to people who saw Kon work, the faces were more layered in areas easily within reach, that is at the center of the picture when painted on an easel and at the edges when painted flat on a table (in other words, in positions more accessible to the artist).The resulting degrees of density provide a sense of movement to the picture as a whole.This means that these original works of art were in fact created using a simple methodology combined with habit.Indeed, they were apparently much simpler when Kon first began drawing.He apparently walked around with a small notebook in his pocket, occasionally using a pen to draw simplistic faces made of circular outlines, round eyes, and noses made of straight lines.However, after a studio was opened in 2007, which will be described later, he began to paint primarily on large panels.Another characteristic of how he worked is that he produced such large-scale paintings at a slow pace, averaging one or two pieces per year.He would occasionally show his staff the portraits in his sketchbook, pointing out who each one was supposed to be.In light of this fact, one might consider the faces in his pictures as unique individuals, each with their own name.Even so, it remains true that Kon has transformed them into individuals without names, despite their unique facial expressions, and there is no doubt that together these individuals appear as a crowd.Surely, I cannot be the only one for whom this evokes Sartre's existentialist concept of "existence precedes essence (l'existence prcde l'essence)."Kon worked at a studio run by a welfare facility in Iwate Prefecture.Interestingly, there is a small exhibition space on the ground floor below the studio.Therefore, those who are aware of the exhibition space and visit it to see artworks can, if they wish, also see how artists create such works.Kon, who also used this space, unfortunately passed away in January 2013.