Paul Kooiker brings his key work Nude Animal Cigar (2014) to Voorlinden. In this fascinating photo series, shot with his iPhone, he shows 63 nudes, 63 animals and 63 cigars. The only unifying factor is that Kooiker applies a different sepia filter each time, giving the images a nostalgic yet ironic, seductive and strange undertone.

Visual artist Paul Kooiker is known for his photographic, often surrealistic exploration of voyeurism, innocence, and clichés. His images often seem detached from time and place, while also rebelling against any form of convention. This approach is no different in Nude Animal Cigar. With a sense of irony and tension, he blends the absurd and the mundane in this series, featuring 63 studies of naked women, 63 photographs of animals he saw at the (petting) zoo and 63 snapshots from his studio of lit, half-smoked and stubbed-out cigars. With these analogue-looking digital photographs, Kooiker plays with art history, banality, abstraction and expectations of the viewer.

‘Nude Animal Cigar is not just about the photos themselves, the false romanticism of a kitschy sepia filter, or creating confusion by combining three different subjects. It’s about the essence of photography: about your perspective on the world and the act of looking.’ – Paul Kooike

Sense of Freedom
Nude Animal Cigar marked a turning point in Paul Kooiker’s oeuvre exactly ten years ago. At the time, he was asked to create a retrospective, but instead he chose to create this new series of works, in which he also defied what he, as a photographer, was supposed to do or not do. The series introduced a sense of freedom, openness, and playfulness that continues to define Kooiker’s work to this day. In conjunction with the exhibition, an Artist Talk will also be held on Sunday morning, January 12, 2025, where Wim van Sinderen, journalist and former curator of the Fotomuseum Den Haag, will discuss the photo series and Kooiker’s archive with the artist.

‘Paul Kooiker challenges you with both humor and seriousness to look beyond the familiar, toward the uncomfortable and the unexpected. That makes him one of the most intriguing visual artists in the Netherlands.’ – Suzanne Swarts, director Voorlinden

International Recognition
Paul Kooiker was born in 1964 in Rotterdam. He studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. In 1996, he received the Prix-de-Rome Photography, and in 2009, the A. Roland Holst Award for his oeuvre. Kooiker’s work is part of (inter)national public and private collections, and he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions both in the Netherlands and abroad. In addition to his autonomous work, he also photographs for leading fashion magazines such as AnOther, Purple, Vogue Italia, and New York Magazine, and for well-known brands like Acne Studios, Diesel, Hermés, and Louis Vuitton. Kooiker lives and works in Amsterdam.