Patrick Koster

Background

About Patrick Koster

Inspired by the time and world we live in, Patrick Koster intervenes artistically by placing 'the evil' in an alienating context. His work ensures that your mind does not immediately see through the struggle and violence in the image, but that you use your imagination to fathom it."In my work I explore the violence and ideas of attackers. In many cases there is hardly any contradiction between reasonable thinking and evil. Reason is an instrument that can be used for good and for evil. Thinking too can easily turn from good to evil.". What does struggle mean for Patrick?"Studying evil and violence has always been a field of the arts. Think of Francisco Goya's painting 'Saturn that swallows up his children', Dantes Hell, Medea from Greek mythology, Van den Vos Reynaerde, Macbeth, The Joker or Hanibal Lecter. It stiltens our fascination with violence, our desire to witness the cross-border, the covert, the forbidden, the gruesome. Art can produce an interval between seeing and understanding, creating a question mark in the midst of the flood of images. Creating a sort of space so that the thinking no longer reproduces the already established opinions and new thoughts can start. To release such an intermediate area, the artist will have to undermine the stereotyped images and thought patterns. Sand in the representation machine so that it falters and jerks and no longer conjures up the calibrated image. None of the contradictions with which we have classified our world is still to be trusted. The beauty no longer belongs to the good, the ugly no longer automatically to evil."