ABOUT

Kosuke Masuda is a Japanese artist based in Yokohama, Japan, trained in the Kōyasan Shingon tradition.

After graduating from the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2004, he entered monastic training at Kōyasan and completed his ordination in 2005.

Working across sumi ink, washi paper, carved metal, stone, the Fence series, and objects connected to bicycle culture, Masuda explores relationships between material, body, memory, time, and trace.

Without preparatory sketches, points and lines gradually reveal themselves through the physical process of making. Rather than imposing fixed images onto material, he approaches creation as a way of encountering structures and relationships already present within matter and space.

His works often explore how stillness can contain movement, and how form can hold memory and time. The relationships and circulation that emerge between seemingly different elements — paper, stone, metal, bicycles, and space — are deeply connected to the esoteric Buddhist understanding that all things exist through interdependence.

He also works under the name kokekurumo.no.ki, a creative ensemble with his partner Kei Hompo.

His works have been exhibited in Japan, New Zealand, Germany, and the United States.

Nothing exists alone.