Orchid Mantis 1

Joachim Koester is a Danish born on 1962 in Copenhagen. He graduated of the Royal Danish Academy of Art in his native city in 1993.
Starting in the mid-1990s, he developed an oeuvre that could be described as a complex web in which journalistic and historical research fuses with personal and fictive narratives. Koester is preoccupied with the unknown, the unseen, and the forgotten. Balancing the thin line between documentary and fiction, Koester’s films, photos, and installations reexamine and activate forgotten histories, failed utopias, and the obsolete. Koester’s installations usually begin with an investigation of an obscure historical figure or fact, often linked to the outer fringes of culture, such as occult and otherworldly phenomena. This information then becomes the starting point for a story that phases in and out throughout the course of the exhibition. In his work, bygone counter-cultural movements reemerge in the same way that geographical and spiritual journeys are retraced.