Daisuke Kosugi — À propos — Slash Paris

Daisuke Kosugi was born in 1984 in Tokyo, Japan. He now lives and works in Oslo. Film-making artist, he is also the co-founder (with Ina Hagen) of the Louise Dany exhibition and art exchange space in Oslo.

His father, a former architect-engineer, expected him to become a doctor, architect or lawyer. But Daisuke Kosugi cannot bring himself to spend his life in the same company. The son certainly obeys by enrolling in law school; less to bend to the paternal oukase than to understand, intimately, why men obey the laws. After graduating, he worked sixteen hours a day in an insurance company under the guidance of a sociopathic superior. On the other hand, in the evening, the guitarist runs the underground dance floor. Music helped him cope with the stress of the environment and avoided karôshi¹.

After changing hemispheres, he changed his nationality in 2014, and more, his profession. Living is the goal he gives to himself when he arrives in Oslo for the love of a beautiful Norwegian. He was 24 at the time. The age, for the average Japanese, to get a good job, to save money and to prepare for marriage. Whereas, in Norway you can take the time to look for yourself.

“People in Japan live to work, while in Norway they work for a living”

Daisuke Kosugi

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Daisuke loves everything: fashion, architecture, music. Contemporary art seems esoteric to him, as was the law in Japan. So he decided to study it, interested in painting as well as performance. After graduating in 2014 from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts, he participated in the prestigious Gwangju Biennale in 2016 before being taken into residence the following year at the Wiels Art Centre in Brussels. Naturally, the tug-of-war between system and individual freedom is at the heart of his very first film, The Lost Dreams of Naoki Hayakawa, which aired in 2016 in Gwangju. Daisuke Kosugi plays the role of an artistic director whose dreams are wrung out by the advertising agency that employs him.

His own rebellion can also be recognized in his portrait two years later of his uncle Yuji, an old hippie who, in the late 1970s, had left Tokyo to play salsa in Harlem. Voluntarily long, his films are tasted and revealed slowly, like those of Yasujiro Ozu or Chantal Akerman, his assumed references. It takes four minutes in front of a black screen, with syrupy music, before getting into the heart of Meeting Uncle Yuji. The first quarter of an hour of False Gravity can also seem tedious. But this rhythm allows to gradually empathize with the father figure, especially during the endless eight minutes he puts to dress.

His latest solo exhibitions include: Dawning of the Dance Floor, Podium, Oslo (2015) and Forgive Me For I Am Not Gentle in duets with Ina Hagen, INCA Seattle (2016).

His work has been presented at the LIAF (Lofoten International Art Festival) in Norway; cPH:DOX 2017 (Special Mention to NEW:VISION Award), the 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016) and the Konsthall in Malmo (2016).

He was shortlisted for the DNB Savings Bank Foundation’s Grants for Emerging Artist in 2016, the Oslo Kunstforening and the International Award of the Spring Exhibition 2016, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen.

In 2018, after his year at the Wiels Art Centre, he was in residence at the International City of Arts in Paris.

¹ Overworked suicide wreaks havoc in Japan.