Kobi Walsh

Kobi Walsh (b. 1995) is a Brooklyn-based photographic and sculptural visual artist whose work focuses on highlighting the subjectivity of our perspective. He captures intricate impressionistic fragments of light and time in order to parallel the fragile nature of our individual reality. Not relying on digital manipulation, Kobi’s work explores themes of authenticity and the transience of the present moment. Kobi received a B.S. in Cognitive and Brain Sciences from Tufts University, incorporating an understanding of the neurological foundations of perception to play with our expectations of light and color. Kobi’s work has been exhibited internationally with upcoming exhibitions at both The Other Art Fair Brooklyn and Chicago, and Superfine! Art Fair in Seattle. He has won 33 awards for his photography from organizations such as PX3 Prix de La Photographie Paris, the International Photography Awards, Moscow International Foto Awards, and Photographers Forum. Kobi’s work has been published 15 times in international publications such as Friend of the Artist, The Flux Review, The Curator’s Salon, Create! Magazine, Inside Artists UK, Art Reveal Magazine, and 123 Art Magazine.

Artists Statement

For me, all subjects exist as fluid, their surfaces ever-changing by way of variations in light, time, and perspective. Through my sculptural and photographic work, created entirely without digital manipulation, I aim to highlight the unique combinations of these factors that give life and soul to the surrounding atmosphere and to the present moment. At the core of my work I hope to promote a recognition of how these variables along with the differences in our subjective perspective define the unique feelings we associate with a subject.

Beginning with the empirical and analytical observation of light, my pieces remove visual cues of depth, attempting to disassociate the outward identity of the subject. My work instead focuses on the unseen subject: a momentary feeling produced by changes in light or time.

While appearing at first glance abstract, my works are meant in fact to be representational, but to represent a reality beyond immediate impressions; to create rather a fuller, and more authentic, visual experience of a subject. That experience transcends the visual, and therefore requires an approach that, while remaining representational and unmanipulated, through its alternative appearance challenges the viewer to move beyond socially constructed meanings of subject.

My work, then, targets the inherently subjective nature of our perspective as a means of exploring the evolution of individual realities. My photographs capture the delicate fragments of light and time that define distinct moments of my own authentic experience. I draw inspiration in part from sculptural masters of light such as James Turrell and Olafur Elliason, as well as the impressionist movement – specifically from Monet and the plein air painting technique, spontaneous renderings of nature as an amalgam of light, and the enveloppe, the unifying atmospheric light encompassing all things.