Dunhill Joins Forces With Tokyo-Based Digital Artist Kenta Cobayashi
Manipulating images from the Dunhill archive, Tokyo-based digital artist Kenta Cobayashi sees his work take physical form as prints on a variety of menswear
With the increasing trend of fashion houses working with contemporary artists to create limited lines, British luxury goods brand dunhill has collaborated with Japanese artist Kenta Cobayashi for their capsule Spring Summer 2020. Known for his vivid digital distortions on existing photographs where large, graphic blocks of colour and precise lines mimic the gestural brushstrokes, Cobayashi has created a series of works based on selected images of the brand’s archive, applied as prints onto diverse textures of silk cotton shirting and paper nylon hats.
Digital artist Kenta Cobayashi
The capsule collection also encompasses outerwear, casual wear and leather goods. In his first experimentation with clothing, Cobayashi highlights that he wanted people to experience his work “not just through a fixed display, but with their bodies.” He points to the new meanings and contextual connections that images physically moving through space generate, preferring to veer away from the fixed institutional display and its inherent highbrow implications. An exploration of various forms of display seems to surface in his dunhill works, as prints were based on images of dunhill stores in Tokyo, as well as former catalogues.
Kenta Cobayashi. longtail catalogue. 2019
The displays of commerce, while subtle and distorted, ironically find their way back onto the consumer product, as quiet reminders of the massive industries backing a single garment, despite its bold, abstract aesthetic. “In closely collaborating with creative director Mark Weston,” notes Cobayashi, “His philosophy and the atmosphere of the fashion industry were mixed in and are now a part of me. In time, this experience might be fermented in a completely different way.”
SS20 dunhill X Kenta Cobayashi capsule collection
“For dunhill,” explains creative director Mark Weston, “It was a new way to approach the archive without being a slave to it.” After seeing experimental digital aesthetics become more accessible and integrated into various fields and platforms, Weston notes, “I had really been taken by Kenta’s work a couple of years ago and I was just waiting for the right time to ask him to work with me. In a sense, the whole digital field has become much more appealing – I love the idea of digital crafting.”
SS20 dunhill X Kenta Cobayashi capsule collection
Citing Cy Twombly, Japanese hacker culture and early interactions with scribble software in his childhood as major influences, for Kenta Cobayashi, photographs have always been a tangible material. In his manipulations and digital distortions, Cobayashi is playful. As he says, “I stir it up, test its texture and through a process of abstraction, break it down.”
Images courtesy of Dunhill and the respective artist
From the Summer 2020 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR Art