Creative Industry Report: Kensuke Koike

KENSUKE KOIKE/

File:Kensuke Koike ritratto.png - Wikimedia Commons

Kensuke Koike is a Japanese contemporary visual artist based in Venice who works on a variety of different mediums. Although he does installations and sculptures, he is most well known for his collage art where he deals with the deconstruction and reconstruction of the works. He was first inspired by the vintage photographs he found from flea markets and hence started exploring the possibilities of manipulating images from such photographs and postcards. From combining different images, he eventually moved to ‘single image processing’ where he manipulates a single image to discover the outcomes he can get from it.

Smoke gets in your eyes, 2018
Top Breeder, 2018

A PLAYFUL EYE/

The beauty of his works lies mainly in the creation process and hence he usually documents and uploads them onto his socials. I first discovered his works from Instagram when I was scrolling through my explore page and I thought that his works were so intriguing to me. They were fascinating with an endearing goofy surreal twist to me which made me want to see more of his works and how he applies his creativity to them. Despite the simple manipulation, he is able to produce results that I would never have imagined. The enchantment of seeing how someone was able to look at the same image in a different perspective from me was really captivating.

Kensuke Koike: Nothing Added, Nothing Removed - IGNANT
From Project “No More, No Less.”, a collaboration between Kensuke Koike & Thomas Sauvin
Kensuke Koike: Nothing Added, Nothing Removed - IGNANT
Nothing Special Happened Today, 2013

NOTHING ADDED, NOTHING REMOVED/

A lot of times in our creative process, we tend to view the idea of having a single theme or concept as being too restrictive for us to develop our ideas. As a result, we often have the tendency to bring in other ideas to create over-embellished works. After seeing Kensuke Koike’s works though, I think all the more we should allow ourselves to be open to explore within a single theme when faced with restrictions. This might not necessarily mean taking the minimal way out, we should also make sure to be precise in addressing the target issue while learning how to think out of the box. I thought that this practice was really helpful to adopt to keep me reflecting upon how I can approach a concept in different ways while pushing me to think creatively.

IDS presentation slides

 

REFERENCES/

Cordroc’h. (2019, May 30). Kensuke Koike, Deconstructing and Reconstructing Photography. Pen Magazine International. https://pen-online.com/arts/kensuke-koike-deconstructs-photos-to-reconstruct/
INTERVIEWED KENSUKE KOIKE. (n.d.). BEYOND PHOTOGRAPHY – The Leading Experimental Photography Platform. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.beyondphotography.online/interviewed-kensuke-koike
LensCulture, K. K. |. (n.d.). Nothing Added, Nothing Removed. LensCulture. Retrieved October 2, 2020, from https://www.lensculture.com/articles/kensuke-koike-nothing-added-nothing-removed
Milosevic, N. (2013, July 5). Kensuke Koike | Widewalls. Widewalls. https://www.widewalls.ch/artists/kensuke-koike