Kotsuhiroi is something of a work of art. Producing pieces he likes to call body objects, his creations are conceptual, personal and brimming with emotion. Accompanying his work with poetry and releasing it as chapters of a novel, his approach to aesthetic is one clouded within a perfectly tailored aura of mystery. Currently based out of ‘nowhere’, the ambiguous individual talked through the strict boundaries of email on her haunting dystopia and the relationship that lies between him and the written word. 

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Colourblind: I feel I should start with the obvious and ask what your background is.

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Kotsuhiroi: I no longer know. I forgot and it doesn’t matter anymore. I am not attached to the ‘background’. I need to forget it to renew myself, to question myself. Not knowing makes me want again for something else. To rediscover what we cannot see. The background can be a kind of recipe that you’ve learnt and you repeat over and over again. I do not want these ready-made recipes. I prefer to progress into oblivion.

 

C: How much does the written word influence your work?

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K: In writing, it is the root poetry which is a very important source of relations. Its depth and its physical presence are a sensitive matter of reactions. It feeds the being with questions and emotions. It is images and contains in itself a conscience.

 

C: Your work is a combination of scribbled passages, photographs and poetry. How do you combine all of these ideas to the finished piece?

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K: Things are done both by addition and subtraction. I keep by instinct what is right. I remove the boredom, I refuse the lie and the fake and I remain in balance in the emotion.

 

C: What is it about the darker side that you find so attractive?

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K: I don’t know what you mean by dark. I am attracted by what is non-compliant, a door that doesn’t open anymore. By forbidden mirrors, silences that stay far away, closed faces and memories I no longer have.

 

C: It seems that with your work, there is a fine line between the beautiful and the haunting. What is beauty?

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K: It is a breath. It doesn’t have any rules or status. It is timeless, visible only during certain days. It transforms at night while you sleep, remains invisible for a long time and then suddenly appears, tells you nothing and leaves.

 

C: Elements of sex, violence, and death also feed into your work. These are all very personal and very human elements to weave into something. How much do your pieces represent you as a person?

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K: Things are connected. They are self-portraits and truths running around me. My objects are stories, uncertain passages moving between here and there. I remain suspended in the air hanging to fragments.

 

C: If you wrote an autobiography, what would its title be?

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K: ‘Nothing but Words to Learn to Lie’.

 

C: You seem to release every stories like a chapter of a book. What does the next chapter, the future hold for you?

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K: I just finished a long poem titled ‘Nothing but Words to Learn to Lie’. The next poem is not there yet but I have some details, some impressions, that’s all.

 

C: And lastly, what does the colour black mean to you?

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K: Black is not a colour, it is a nothingness which crosses the light and slips like an infinite into the smallest detail. It turns around us. It is a sound, a sort of in-between which stays away to feed confusions. It can’t be measured, it neither begins nor ends. I look at black like a room. It pretends to be there, but I can never reach it.