Daisuke Kosugi: Invisible Touch

The film is shown in an enveloping circular space that gives the experience of inside and outside and of entering an intimate and private sphere. Installations where moving images and sculptural objects interact – in the exhibition represented by concrete objects on the floor and a bamboo and copper railing – are central to the artist. The objects are often corporeal and tactile, for example the recurrent use of bamboo branches with their undulating and organic shapes gives associations to the flexibility and vulnerability of the human body.

A consistent theme in Kosugi’s work is alienation and outsiderness in various social environments. In a poetic and low-key way, he conveys the everyday routines and patterns of action of individuals as intimate dramas. The works are based on real people and he often uses his own family members to explore ideas around belonging, trauma and memory. The conflict between personal freedom and the restrictions that society places on the individual is put into play. In several of the works, the body is the focal point through an exploration of physical and psychological pain. Previous examples are the film Meeting Uncle Yuji (2018), which deals with his uncle’s lonely, secret life as a musician in Harlem in New York and his choice never to perform for an audience, or the film A False Weight (2019), based on his father’s neurological illness after a life as a bodybuilder in Tokyo. Kosugi shines a spotlight on how our movements and personal freedom are limited by society’s various regulations and laws, and how individual bodies can form a starting point for imagining alternative social structures.