They are fans of each other’s work. That in itself inspired a – perhaps unexpected – duo presentation with work by Paul Kooiker and Marenne Welten. Exciting and especially challenging is the game that both play with ‘falsifying’, distorting and simultaneously intensifying reality. It is their imagination that makes them push the boundaries of the medium they work in. A Hand Not Seen is a unique exhibition, not only because of the unexpected combination of painting and photography, but especially because of the way in which the works enter into a mutual dialogue

Marenne Welten is guided by memory. The flow of time and her personal reflections on it loom up out of matter in her paintings. To the farthest reaches of the kingdom of memory, she searches for memories and the images that may lie therein. A memory, with all its associations, yields an idea for a work, and then that image is conjured up from the material – thick layers of oil paint – in an almost sculptural manner. For Marenne Welten, time is not the compelling straightjacket of chronology. In her work, she takes the viewer along the places where the traces of personal themes lie. Welten looks at the past from the present, reflecting on history from a current urgency. Her work is narrative, her memories based on reality, as it were conjured from her own life and background. Personal themes take on a universal form under her searching hand. At the same time, the work is also about painting itself, the possibilities of light, color and paint. Her work is physical, and demands movement when looking at it, from every perspective the work seems different. In that sense it has something sculptural about it, and that is also what connects her work with Kooiker’s.

We showed Paul Kooiker’s images from his series of Fashion works in a solo during Paris Photo in November 2023. It turned out to be a striking presentation, which received enthusiastic response and, in combination with the newly published book Fashion, proved to be a highlight at the fair. “Fashion” is a concept that represents what is trending at the moment. Yet, Paul Kooiker’s work is characterized by a certain timelessness. The artist portrays the biggest fashion brands and the most famous faces of this moment, but translates them into a completely unique world, where his style strongly refers to the history of photography and art movements such as surrealism. Kooiker’s recent work moves at the intersection of fashion and art. In recent years, he has made a name for himself in the world of fashion photography where he does shoots for famous brands such as Rick Owens, Marni, Givenchy and Viktor & Rolf. He publishes his photos in Vogue Italia, Dazed, Another Magazine, Vanity Fair, M le Monde, and New York Times Magazine, among others. The fashion assignments give Kooiker room to experiment with new ideas for his work. “Paul Kooiker often exaggerates the form of bodies to the extreme. Using artificial body extensions, wigs and extravagant clothing, as well as light, shadow and fragmentation, he creates a unique visual language whose surrealistic undertones recall icons from art history and photography. Social themes such as diversity, body positivity or the fetishization of bodies, which the fashion world picks up on, also translate directly into Kooiker’s image production. Between the queer and avant-garde creations of the designers and the nostalgically anarchic look of his photographs, an effective force emerges that is typical of Kooiker.” (Thomas Seelig, Museum Folkwang, Essen, DE)