Presentation

On the Artist Kiiro (by EMON Photo Gallery Director, Seiji Komatsu)

Kiiro’s creative focus rests on photographs of cosmos flowers taken regularly since 2009, such that these flowers have come to be the overarching theme of his work.Superimposing image upon image, Kiiro adds and subtracts layers in his unique photomontage style. In this way, rather than ‘portraying’ cosmos, perhaps his work may be more aptly defined as seeking out and presenting visually the omnipresent ‘poetry’ of a cosmos field.
The tangled interweaving of stems, the flowers that strain upwards toward the heavens, the buds that frolic in space. Kiiro’s complex, pictorial approach denotes the original definition of cosmos: an expansive, perhaps infinite vastness filled with order and beauty of a sort, yet also imbued with something like a feeling that all struggle in life is in vain. Cosmos flowers are akin to the emotions of a young boy, says the artist. Perhaps Kiiro’s cosmos’ are something like a time capsule, comprising so many pale, distant memories and dreams.
“Flowers should always be as if in a field” were the words of master of the tea ceremony Sen No Riykuu–free of the selfish hand that seeks to arrange them. In this same way Kiiro suppresses any presupposition or anticipation, and without the slightest pretense, weaves the scenery of his own heart–as is–into a single tapestry of light.
Kiiro’s latest works are a unique contribution to the world of photo, imbued with the determination of one who has firmly chosen to walk the path of an artist. Photo is central to Kiiro’s creative process, though more than that, Kiiro is without doubt a contemporary artist in his own right.