Through art, surprise and derision, the Dutch photo presented its fashion design and beauty at the FASHION show at the Foam gallery in Amsterdam.
At the end of his career, Paul Kooiker is ready to be liberated by the dominant fashion and beauty paradigm. The photo 59enne di Rotterdam has built its visual universe, both conceptual and experimental. Its credo: deviate from the industry's prerequisites and conform to the shape of the body, with artificial extensions, parrucche and accessories of different types. Everything is distorted in stories in which feticism, surrealism, frammentazione, composition of sculptures, art of grezza and giochi of shadow and light catapultano in a parallel and strano world. The Foam gallery in Amsterdam dedicated a second show to “Paradise Twenty-One” from 2006. “FASHION” features a variety of images of its usual fashion with “sala degli specchi”, congelando così “la velocità dell’industria” e rivelando “l’assurance del desiderio umano”.
Scatti senza tempo
The photo is posted in its state of communication with an iPhone, always powered by a different language depending on the convention. When you reach the smartphone, you see the symbol of a society that is more narcissistic, the iconoclastic artist shows itself in harmony and filters through the reality of the body. Perché quello che gli piace della fotografia è “imperfection”. Who, as I see it, I have modeled postures and unusual poses or bandits of the genere, with the occasional nascent or missing image, masking the original identity. In white and dark seppia, this surrealist appassionato creates a temporal image, disconnesse dal tempo et dal luogo, where comes the pit of the film. With humor and derision, Paul Kooiker refused to ignore the diktat, giocando sulla feticizzazione dei corpi e dei desideri irrealizzati – quasi freudiani, comme sottolinea la galleria. La sua opera si libera da ogni superficialità a favore di una sensualità grezza e frontal che invites the viewer to imagine a story.
Nathalie Dassa
https://www.foam.org/events/paul-kooiker
FOAM ad Amsterdam
Until February 12 2023