Physical and mental exploration have been founding elements in Joachim Koester’s research for several years. While exploration was mainly a matter of geography during the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, triggered by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in documenting minor events, forgotten by History, in order to reintroduce them into collective memory. Using 16mm documentary films, photographic series or books, his work transforms stories into images and vice versa, appearing as a quest for the invisible and the vanishing.
With a keen interest in the stranger corners of the long human story, and a persistent interest in the supernatural, the transcendent, and the psychedelic, Joachim Koester’s work follows the artists own undying interest in physical and psychological limits. While exploration was a matter of crossing geographies before the 19th century, the 20th century brought the mental exploration of our unconscious, hastened by the discovery of psychoanalysis. Koester is interested in visualizing specific events—those forgotten, overlooked, or suppressed by the official historical record—in order to reintroduce them into collective memory. Using 16mm documentary films, photographic series or books, his work transforms stories into images and vice versa, appearing as a quest for the invisible and the vanishing.
Tarantism is the name of disease which appeared in southern Italy, resulting from the bite of a spider called Tarantula...
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
Walking Through is one of a series of videos—sometimes humorous, often absurd—that record the artist’s performative interactions with objects in a particular site...
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon...
Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees...
Mario Garcia Torres films a game of Charades among professional actors guessing the former North Korean dictator’s favorite Hollywood films...
Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...
This work includes sketches for Extrastellar Evaluations , the project she produced at Kadist...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
Untitled (Perfect Lovers + 1) by Cerith Wyn Evans takes as its starting point Felix Gonzales-Torres’s seminal work Untitled (Perfect Lovers) , in which two clocks were synchronized and left to run without interference, the implication being that one would stop before the other...
Tanaka’s unique understanding of objects and materials is reflected in the four photographs that document his Process of Blowing Flour ...
Ponderosa Pine IV belongs to a series of large-scale photographs of trees taken by Graham and depicts a particular species that live in Northern California...
This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
Mario Garcia Torres imagines cinematic devices to replay stories occasionally forgotten by Conceptual art...