Galleri
Nicolai Wallner
Joachim
Koester, Anna Karina #1 (2001), C-print, Fuji Crystal Archive, Mounted
and framed, 87,5x109,7 cm (paper) 62,0x85,7 cm (image), Edition of
5+2AP
|
Joachim
Koester:
Bialowieza Forest and Anna Karina
March 2 - April 20, 2002
Galleri Nicolai Wallner
Njalsgade 21, Building 15
DK 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
phone: +4532570970 fax: +4532570971
nw@nicolaiwallner.com http://www.nicolaiwallner.com
|
To preview the show online please go to:
http://www.nicolaiwallner.com/exhibitions/Koester2002/Koester2002.
html
Press Release
It is a great pleasure to present an exhibition with new works by
Joachim Koester.
In the Main Gallery we show The project Bialowieza Forest. The
Bilaowieza Forest dates back to 8000 BC. It was never cut or planted by
human hands and it's the only remaining example of the original lowland
forest, which once covered much of Europe. Situated in east Poland on
the border of Belorussia it contains a great diversity of plants,
animals and insects, as well as thousands of species of fungi and
vascular plants, many of these extinct elsewhere. A fact that makes the
forest an important site for research today, providing biologists with a
unique primeval model to study and compare natural processes.
The Bialowieza Forest has been famous for centuries as the home of the
European Bison, and through the years it has been described in
literature and travel accounts as a: Sylvan arcadia, an asylum, a
succor, a pristine Eden, a sacred groove and a dark and alien
impenetrable wilderness. Poles, Lithuanians, Germans and Russians have
mapped the forest as a homeland, a setting for national identity,
utilizing its distinctiveness to illuminate national character.
The Polish poet Adam Mickiewiez imagined the forest as a fortified
shelter, a place of origin and resurrection for the Polish-Lithuanian
nation - the Reichsmarschall ermann Göring saw the German occupation
of the area in 1939 as an opportunity to welcome back what he believed
was a pure 'Teutonic Ur-wald', long vanished from German soil. A belief
that had fatal consequences for the local population.
Landscapes are culture before they are nature, constructs of the
imagination projected onto a specific place. The 9 photographs from
Bialowieza Forest depict a location that through history has been
greatly infused with myths and metaphors.
Like his previous works from Chrstiania and the Arctic, this work can be
seen as a continuation of Joachim Koester's practice in which an
imaginary site is paradoxically investigated through its material
reality.
In the project space we show the work Anna Karina. Anna Karina became
famous as an actress in 1961 playing the protagonist in the film A Woman
is a Woman. During the next six years she stared in numerous films by
Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Visconti. Joachim Koester's 4
photographs, shot within a second, depict Anna Karina standing in a
park. Like four frames in a film, the images create a sense of movement
- of Anna Karina moving her head slightly downwards to the left. Besides
from being a homage to Anna Karina, the photographs evoke her position
as an icon of the French New Wave.
During the last years Joachim Koester has been exhibiting at Documenta
X, Kassel, Centre National de la Photographie, Paris, Arnolfini Gallery,
Bristol, Kunstwerke, Berlin, PS 1 Centre of Contemporary Art, New York,
Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, MCA, Chicago, Malmo Konst Museum, Malmo,
Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Kunsthalle Wien, Wien, Van AbbeMuseum,
Eindhoven, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Kölnischer Kunstverein,
Cologne, Museée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, Kiasma
Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Johannesburg Biennale,
Johannesburg, Louisiana Humlebaek, Kwangju Bienale, South Korea.
February 27 2002 Joachim Koester will open a solo exhibition at
Kunsthalle Nurnberg, Germany.
If you have any questions please take contact and we will be very
pleased to assist you.
We welcome you in the gallery.
Kind regards
Galleri Nicolai Wallner
For more information go to: http://www.nicolaiwallner.com/exhibitions/Koester2002/Koester2002.
html
|
|
