Solo Exhibition Patrick Koster

In addition to their booth, participating galleries will also be organizing a solo booth in which the work of an artist will be presented. Its purpose is to enlarge the visibility of the art and oeuvre of this artist. Galerie Fontana presented works by visual artist Patrick Koster in a solo exhibition.

The Fugitive, triptych, 2014

One of the works that Patrick presented was a large triptych entitled The Fugitive, The triptych was made in the collage technique. My favourite working material is adhesive film that I apply on drawing polyester. The collage on polyester is mounted on a lightbox. It all has a dimension of h 169,6 x w 338,3 or h 66.8 x w 133.2 inch. Read more

Captured By Infrared Camera

As a starting point for the making of this work I chose a found news photo. It was taken from a bird’s eye view of a scene set in Watertowen, close to Boston, USA. Central to this futuristic-looking media image was a white, rather large, egg-like shape. An egg, hidden behind a house. It turned out to be a covered boat on a trailer in the winter storage. In it was a boy lying in a fetal position. He remained invisible to the naked eye There was a real manhunt going on. The boy was a fugitive and had reason to hide.

He had been solitary hiding in the boat for three days and had actually driven his pursuers to despair. At the time, he had written his reflections in a statement, much like a creed with a ballpoint pen. After a tip from the owner of the boat, who had seen a piece of sail loose, the situation came out of his impasse. A police or army helicopter traced the boy’s position in an instant with an infrared camera. Cameras that can see through materials. Thet do not see colors, but make temperature images.

The Disclosure

Compassion is one of the wrenching motives in this story. The photo opportunity was just before an important showdown. The boy had been discovered. You want to know how he is doing, just as you are curious about the history. A drama of violence had occurred. The boy in the boat was 19 year old Dzjochar. Together with his brother Tamerlan (26 years old) they are known as the “Boston Bombers”. The brothers had received political asylum in America as young Chechen refugees. They had completed their high school, were integrated but unexpectedly radicalized in a short time. This happend under influence of extremely Islamic beliefs that they came into contact with via media, the internet.

Triptych

The narrative element gives access to the work and can influence the angle of view. It explains why I chose a picture story and thought of a triptych. Triptychs are already known from Byzantine art (4th to 13th century) but were mainly used in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Triptychs were often part of a larger altar in a church or chapel. Because the scene surrounding the Boston attack had religious references in several ways, I found the shape of the triptych, which from a historical point of view often also depicted religious images, inevitable. View this solo exhibition here online.