Kosuke Ajiro — Monograph “Kingdom of Sally”

Kosuke Ajiro (b. 1980) is a Tokyo-based artist who, since childhood, has depicted and pursued the "other world" within him. He works mainly in acrylic painting, alongside ceramic sculpture, decorative plates, dolls, animation and music.

This "other world" draws on the artist's childhood memories, influences, and everyday experiences, while being presented in the narrative of an "unknown civilisation that once perished at a medieval stage of development." It is fictional, yet at the same time constitutes the artist's internal reality. Ajiro paints to record the history of this distant past as it unfolds before his eyes. His works are ancient relics, and that is why they show signs of decay and ageing. Each work has its own temporal setting and context. Characters and imaginary monsters are sometimes given proper names, and the scenes depicted carry meaning. They may function as origin myths, moral lessons, fables, or minor events. These detailed settings expand into grand scales of dynasties, creation myths and civilisations, the full extent of which not even the artist himself has yet grasped. Freed from constraints, this "other world" is full of contradictions; cruelty and humour, the grotesque and the lovable coexist without surprise. The artist often witnesses himself in the form of a "young girl" and records her in paint — a kind of doppelgänger phenomenon.

Ajiro's work carries elements of traditional Japanese picture scrolls, medieval European manuscripts and popular religious art from across time and place, with the particular influence of Hieronymus Bosch. As an expression of the deep unconscious it can be related to Jung, Surrealist visions and Outsider Art, while also showing affinity with contemporary Japanese character culture.