Ausstellungseröffnung Paul Kooiker - Fashion

In the organizer's words:

PAUL KOOIKER - FASHION

OPENING FRIDAY JUNE 28, 2024, 5 - 9 PM, A DANCE PERFORMANCE BY **SONYA MOHOVA** AND MUSIC BY **JAKUB KUBICA** AT 7:30 PM

THE ARTIST WILL BE PRESENT

Paul Kooiker is currently one of the most sought-after photographers in the fashion world, without catering to its conventional ideals of beauty. In his sepia-toned black and white photographs, models and mannequins alike strike extraordinary poses in minimalist settings. In many cases, their bodies are transformed beyond recognition by dysfunctional items of clothing or completely replaced by them. Faces are pushed out of the frame or covered by hair. Light and shadow turn fragmented bodies into surreal sculptures that exist solely in the medium of photography. The focus is always on the ambivalence of the body. It is often impossible to tell the gender of the protagonists or whether they are human or dolls. Kooiker plays on the keyboard of the "uncanny" through rigid, statuesque poses, the replacement of body parts with mannequin limbs and the isolation of certain body parts into fetish-like objects. His peculiar still lifes, created solely with the iphone, give space to an unorthodox beauty. They aim to create fragile poetic beings in a diffuse light between desire and repulsion, between self-lost and self-assertion. Text by Birgit Kulmer

Paul Kooiker (born 1964, Rotterdam) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (1990-1992). Kooiker was awarded the Prix-de-Rome Photography in 1996 and the A. Roland Holst Award in 2009 for his work. Kooiker's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, including at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, FOMU Fotomuseum in Antwerp, Fotomuseum Den Haag and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, where he held a solo exhibition of his commissioned work entitled Fashion in 2023.