post-title Michael Köster | Berlin Visionen | Köppe Contemporary | 25.01.-26.02.2022

Michael Köster | Berlin Visionen | Köppe Contemporary | 25.01.-26.02.2022

Michael Köster | Berlin Visionen | Köppe Contemporary | 25.01.-26.02.2022

Michael Köster | Berlin Visionen | Köppe Contemporary | 25.01.-26.02.2022

until 26.02. | #3300ARTatBerlin | Köppe Contemporary presents from 25th January 2022 (Opening: 21.01.) the solo exhibition Berlin Visionen by the artist Michael Köster with a selection of works dominated by black-and-white photographs and characterized by suggestive stagings on the computer.

The motifs in the exhibition – almost without exception they are views of Berlin architecture – are effectively staged with precise lighting, sharp contouring, and the finest nuances of light and dark. The dramaturgy of light and shadow is an essential element in enhancing the mood of the picture. Koster’s formal language reveals influences of New Objectivity photography as well as those of Film Noir. But associations with painting also arise when viewing some of the pictorial stagings, whose atmosphere is reminiscent of the enigmatic mood of inanimate and stillness in Pittura Metafisica paintings.

The fact that the motifs develop such a haunting presence in the course of the editing process on the computer is partly due to the fact that Michael Köster isolates the buildings on which he focuses. They are detached from their real urban contexts in which they normally stand – the buildings around them, for example. The process of alienation that this entails is heightened by the fact that the artist often places his motifs in a fictitious dark or evening or nocturnal setting.

ART at Berlin - Courtesy Koeppe Contemporary - Michael Koester - Monolith I Berlin 2017
MONOLITH I | Berlin, 2017, 70 x 105 cm, Edition: 5 + 1 AP sowie 112 x 150 cm, Edition 3 + 1 AP

In addition, certain aspects that characterize the life of a metropolis like Berlin – such as the pulsating hustle and bustle of the squares and streets – are often omitted. One looks in vain for the omnipresent crowds and the turbulent traffic in the artist’s pictures. This non-presence of the social and societal life of the big city is probably the most striking feature of the photographs. Rarely is a person to be seen in the artist’s works. When Köster does “launch” him in his pictures, the human being appears shadowy, anonymous, and meaningless in comparison to the powerful architecture that dominates the composition of the picture. Moreover, man seems to have no sense of his surroundings. He hurries, introverted or with his eyes fixed on his cell phone, towards an unknown destination.

ART at Berlin - Courtesy Koeppe Contemporary - Michael Koester - Flyer

Köster’s pictures are not only irritating in that they reveal a different reality in relation to our everyday experience and perception of urban urbanity. They fascinate, but they also – par excellence – raise questions, for example on topics such as identity and anonymity or urbanity and urban society.

André Lindhorst, January 2022

Vernissage: Friday, January 21, 2022, 19:00 – 22:00. 2G plus rule applies. Proof required.

Opening Weekend: Saturday, January 22,2022, 2:00pm – 6:00pm & Sunday, January 23, 2022, 12:00pm – 4:00pm. 2G plus rule applies. Proof required. 

Show Dates: Saturday, January 22 through Saturday, February 26, 2022.

To the Gallery

 

 

Image caption title image: U-Bahnhof Olympia-Stadion | Berlin, 2017, 50 x 75 cm sowie 35 x 52 cm, Edition je 10 + 1 AP

Exhibition Michael Köster – Köppe Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Contemporary Art | Exhibitions Berlin Galleries | ART at Berlin

 

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