WORK '62-13 WORK ’62-13

The year 1962 was one that was particularly fruitful for Isobe. He participated in "The Yomiuri Independent Artists' Exhibition" and "The International Biennial Exhibition of Prints in Tokyo", started to participate in shows abroad with "Structure de Repetition" at Galerie Stadler in Paris and "Strutture e Stile Giappone" at Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna, Torino, and at the end of the year held his first one-man show. Most of the works he created in that year are pieces in which cardboard emblems are placed neatly covering a board. The accumulation of ordinary objects, which in this case can be seen as either labels or family crests, constructs a work that is common to specimens of "Anti-Art" of the early 1960s created by Tetsumi Kudo and Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Isobe's former classmates at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. With his interest in "the repeated unit that is present in every structure" and "scale conversion and combination," Isobe would later try his hand in various fields, creating for instance a large three-dimensional work constructed of chests of drawers as well as murals and other architectural decorations. He went to the United States in 1965 to study architecture and environmental planning, and this made him aspire at an ideal integration of science and art. With the Répétition of emblems as the starting point, Isobe has expanded his range of interest continually. From 1962 to 1983, this work was in the collection of M. Tapié who organized the above two shows in Europe.