At Parrotta Contemporary Art in Köln and Bonn are presented two exhibitions by Paul Kooiker. He 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 dysfunctional items of clothing that have been moulded beyond recognition or replaced by them entirely. 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.
Paul Kooiker (born 1964, Rotterdam) studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and 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 for his oeuvre in 2009. Foam previously hosted a solo exhibition of his commissioned work in 2023 under the title Fashion, Kooiker’s works have been displayed in countless solo and group exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad, including Museum Folkwang, Essen; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; Centraal Museum, Utrecht; FOMU Fotomuseum, Antwerp; Fotomuseum Den Haag; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.
Paul Kooiker – Fashion
28 June – 16 August 2024
Parrotta Gallery Köln
Brüsseler Str. 21
50674 Köln, Germany
Paul Kooiker – Eggs & Rarities
29 June – 16 August 2024
Parrota Gallery Bonn
An d. Burg Lede 1
53225 Bonn, Germany
Open Air Film Evening, Film and Fashion – A Film Story, curated and accompanied on the piano by film and art critic Daniel Kothenschulte, Park Burg Lede Bonn, Saturday 20 July 2024, From 9:30 Pm
