Paul Kooiker

Paul Kooiker is among the most interesting conceptual photographers currently working in the Netherlands. Although his work consists of photographic images, he is not so much a photographer as a sculptor and installation artist. His fascination with intriguing themes like voyeurism, innocence and clichés leads him to construct fictive collections of images that are of extremely uncertain origin, subject and significance. In his latest installation, 'Nude animal cigar', Kooiker looks back over his twenty-year career. The result is a bewildering array of photographic works, in which images of nudes and animals are interspersed with close-ups of the countless cigars he has smoked in his studio over the years.