Patrick Kostor
Inspired by the time and world in which we live, Patrick Koster intervenes artistically by placing "evil" in an alienating context. His work ensures that your mind does not immediately see struggle and violence in the image, but rather uses your imagination to understand it. “In my work I immerse myself in the violence and ideas of perpetrators of violence. In many cases, there is hardly any contradiction between reasonable thinking and evil. Reason is an instrument that can be used for good and for bad. Thinking can also easily change from good to evil. ”
What does battle mean for Patrick? “Studying evil and violence has traditionally been an area of the arts. Think of Francisco Goya's painting "Saturn swallowing his children", Dante’s Inferno, Medea from Greek mythology, Van den Vos Reynaerde, Macbeth, The Joker of Hanibal Lecter. It satisfies our fascination with violence, our desire to witness the cross-border, the secret, the forbidden, the horrific. Art can create an interval between seeing and understanding, raising a question mark amid the deluge of images. Creating a kind of in-between so that thinking no longer reproduces the already established opinions and new thoughts can begin. To reveal such an intermediate area, the artist will have to undermine the stereotypical images and thinking patterns. Sprinkle sand in the representation machine, so that it falters and jerks and no longer conjures up the calibrated image. None of the contradictions with which we have divided our world appears to be trusting. The beautiful no longer belongs to the good, the ugly no longer automatically to evil. ”
Using knives and scissors as brushes, Patrick Koster paints with plastic on light. Inspired by the news, pictures from the media, poetry and philosophy and biblical and mythical iconography, the artist misleadingly uses bright and joyful colours. Intrigued by tension between (inner) peace and violence, he often treats subjects that are dark and layered with heavy meanings.
The duality between colour and subject is characteristic for his work, although the brightness of the colours used may also appear aggressive to the viewer. The light behind the plastic makes the colours violently confrontational. Similar to pop art Koster’s work is coupled to modernity and modern techniques.