Paul Kooiker is a Dutch photographer known for photos that are, at one and the same time, fascinating, offensive, disturbing, and mysterious. Many of his works begin as series in which he inquires into many themes: people, animals, nudes, objects, architecture and much more, always to create an incisive shift of view, above all for the typology of the framing and the final outcome of the image. Many inspirations can be recognised behind his art, an overt and studied citationism is seen in many ways in each of his projects: in every series we always read various “layers”. The greater part of his photos have been shot with digital cameras, at times he simply uses a cell phone; and his subjects are equally surprising, often taken from the photographer’s everyday life and transformed by his view into unexpected, distant, grotesque visions.

Paul Kooiker (1964) lives and works in Amsterdam. He studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He was the winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1996 and of the A. Roland Holst Prize in 2009. He has held solo shows in many museums and galleries, including FOAM in Amsterdam, the Geementemuseum in The Hague, and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. His work has been seen in many group shows in numerous international institutions, including the Venice Biennale, the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris; the He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzen; the Museum for Contemporary Art, Vigo; the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow; and the Maison Rouge, Paris. He is the author of more than fifteen monographic publications.