Joachim Koester: things that SHINE and THINGS that are DARK

Joachim Koester’s solo exhibition at Beirut Art Center purposely associates immersion with perambulation through the movement of images, architectural modifications, as well as color and shade alternations; the usual circulation within the building has been deliberately disrupted. The list of exhibited works (2013–17) reflects the great diversity of mediums used by the artist in the last 12 years, from digital film to photography and sound work in collaboration with Stefan A. Pedersen, and from sculpture in space to environmental pieces.

Koester is a Danish artist whose practice draws from very diverse references such as dance, cinema, vernacular and ritualistic protocols, but also healing and trance-inducing techniques. This induces a patient exploration into the traces that history inscribes in our nervous and muscular systems, which he reanimates by employing different movement practices. He has accumulated an archive of the body in movement over the years, a process that feeds into his kinetic and choreographic research and turns exhibition spaces into frames of experimentation, where situations and questions that surpass language articulate. The body is at once a receptacle, a factor of invisibility or inscription, and a transmitter. Koester gives it the status of an enigma and of a possible place for exchange.

The project for Joachim Koester’s exhibition in Beirut was inspired by the artist’s ability to link spirituality with language and manifestations of the body in their geographical and political dimension. These questions are particularly relevant in Lebanon where religions frame political and social life in very rigid ways and where questions of identity take precedence over the spiritual dimension. things that SHINE and THINGS that are DARK is also meant to address this issue.

Curated by Marie Muracciole

This exhibition is generously supported by Jan Mot, Greene Naftali, Nicolai Wallner and the Danish Art Foundation.