Life Stripe

In the context of Fuorisalone 2013, Chie Art Gallery is glad to present Life Stripe, a project made by the couple of designers and creators Hirokazu Kobayashi and Haruna Yamada – Spread, open from 10th to 20th April. The exhibition opens officially on Wednesday 10th at 6.30 p.m.

Tokyo, 2004. Hirokazu Kobayashi e Haruna Yamada link their two personalities and professionalisms in the so-called creative unit Spread. The idea is to plan a new form of design that turns directly to the private sphere of each person, transforming in image what is in practice lived. The symbol of their production is Life Stripe: parallel stripes of different colours that, gathered together, form every time a new pattern, according to the subject they are composed of. The stripes represent aspects of life seen through the colour, usually fleeting but also simple moments to which a precise colour is assigned. Red refers to job and study, green to relaxing moments. The result is a kind of daily map where the dreariness of some moments is substituted in all the cases by the vivacity of the colour. It is the successful attempt of a completely different approach to the way of living. If I look to my photogram corresponding to yesterday, I realize how a common day, where I had my breakfast, I did the laundry, I went to work, I drank a coffee in a bistro and, in the evening, I went to sleep, is not usual at all: on the contrary, it seems almost engaging. Just the possibility to sum it up with shape and colours makes it clearly more interesting, and positive. Life Stripe creates an interesting comparison between art and a sort of psychological therapy on purpose, since it involves the actions of an individual directly, being organized as an highly personalized exercise that aims to underline the importance of simple gestures that are often ignored. Moreover, the process of treatment started by the art work appears during its same creation. The slogan, repeated continuously as the main reason of the project, is: “The colour is life”.

(Ivana Mazzei)