Editor's note

Kotaro Machiyama is a Japan-born painter and illustrator whose bold and colourful abstract works have been awarded multiple prizes and exhibited across numerous renowned galleries in Japan and South Korea.Central to his work are two principles: the desire to get closer to an object and the process of thinking about this object in another time than the present.''I want to draw it because it is beautiful" is the same as "I want to be like that because it looks cool" or "I want to sing because it seems fun." This is the first condition of "the desire to get closer to an object that I am attracted to.''For the second principle, "thinking about it in a time frame other than the present," the artist enters into a process of creation where he reinterprets the object and renders it on a flat surface. The process of composition, the extraction of colors, and their reconstruction helps him to detach from everyday life and to start thinking of the object in a manner and time that is out of the ordinary. The result is a creation that is perhaps more confusing than comprehensible - that extracts the viewer from their standard frame of reference and forces them to think differently.>In our busy, everyday lives, we often can' t think this way, but it' s like how you are transported when you think about a favorite place, movie, or music - I believe this artistic process does something similar.The artist currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.