HE WHO WONDERS
An Interview with Kensuke Koike (小池健輔)
Kensuke Koike is a surrealist artist aiming to challenge the possibility of Image Making by bringing new meaning to archive found photography. Born in Japan and now residing in Italy, the artist spends his days buying old photographs at fleamarkets and distorting them in his studio to bring us often incomprehensible work that is exhibited around the world.
No More No Less by Kensuke Koike and Thomas Sauvin
Reviving vintage photographs is an obsession for many collage artists, but none quite live up to the standard of notorious analogue collage image maker Kensuke Koike. Each piece by the artist brings us revelations about culture, and truth in image making.
For many in the field, a collage comprised of one photograph (or single image processing as Koike calls it) could be a restrictive nightmare, but for the artist such a restriction has profound results.
In an interview with Lens Culture, the artist refers to these flea market photographs as materials: Koike looks to create meaning from an existing object, every image is re-composed and therefore recycled to create a new image with a totally different set of potential interpretations.
The artist is more than a collage maker, Koike is as much a video maker, a sculpture, and a puzzle maker. It is almost impossible to categorise such works. These pieces feel like looking at an M.C Escher because of the structured yet impossible nature of the piece.
The work of this artist feel ultimately uncategorisable, they are simply an image. An image that could only be made by Kensuke Koike.