In Santeria Paladini 8 in Milan, on the occasion of the series of meetings organized by Curiouser and Curiouser was guest artist Kensuke Koike, or as he better describes himself, an “alchemist of the image.”
Koike’s work starts from painting; it was in Venice, during his years of studies, that due to circumstances he decided to shift his attention to photographic images, especially those yellowed and abandoned by time, which would lead him to develop a style close to collage, but also to kinetic art, and magic.
Photography for Kensuke Koike is an object to be transformed, which is why he does not consider a photographer, whose creative process is the result of a moment, of speed of execution. Koike also takes months and months before he is able to find the correct combination and arrangement of elements, in a creative method typical of Japanese art and ritual in general.
From his archive of some 80,000 photos he then begins a journey through sepia-toned subjects and faces, which are cut, torn, superimposed, combined, rotated, giving new meaning to unknown stories. It is the simplicity of how Kensuke’s works work – well documented on Instagram – that draws the viewer in. The way the works unravel and deform create videos that we might find in a “satisfying” section, a result achieved by the precision of the cuts, the manic study of composition and movement.
