TORCH’s FIRE IS STILL BURNING
Under the new directorship of
Mo van der Have


REOPENING
Saturday 19 September 2009
from 5pm - 7pm
With
‘New Photowork’
by
ELLEN KOOI


Ellen Kooi, Beverwijk – berenklauw, 2008 – 80 x 138 / 100 x 172 cm.
On the occasion of its reopening under the new directorship of Mo van der Have, TORCH
Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Dutch photographer Ellen Kooi.
The show will open in the presence of the artist on Saturday the 19th of September from 5pm-
7pm and will run through the 24th of October 2009.
According to Spanish curator Octavio Zaya, who wrote the introduction to Kooi’s survey
exhibition at the Casa Encendid, Madrid, last year: “Kooi shows us a world in which the
ordinary silently slips towards fantasy.” With her large-scale panoramic views shot
predominantly in the Netherlands, interest in Kooi has been growing over the past few years,
both in her native country and abroad. With exhibitions in Paris, New York and Spain (to name
a few) she is emerging as one of the most successful Dutch photographers working today.
With a background in dance and theatre photography, Kooi has developed a highly personal
way of giving birth to images that explore myth, chance situations and the way in which
human beings relate to their environment. At times documentary and, more often, staged, all
of her photographs are imbued with an uncanny dreaminess – a view of the world that is at
once familiar and strange.
Her exhibition of new works at TORCH showcases a new series of photographs taken in the
Netherlands, Portugal and the United States of America. Usually featuring one individual set in
an outdoor environment, they rely on visual strategies that have become Kooi’s artistic
signature. Each natural setting comes to express the inner life of the character featured at its
centre; in this way Kooi’s works can easily be interpreted as psychological portraits envisaged
in a Romantic vein. Furthermore, Kooi’s distinctive shooting and editing techniques enable her
to represent landscapes as the naked eye sees them yet fails to inerpret them: their breath
and extension, their endlessness. Kooi’s photographs function both as an invitation to
interrogate our own viewing habits and a starting point from which we can build up our own
story.
Ellen Kooi (1962) was born in Leeuwarden and attended the art academy in Groningen before
becoming a resident at the prestigious Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Her work has been
exhibited widely and forms part of major Dutch and international collections. She lives and
works in Haarlem, the Netherlands.
The New Photowork exhibition will be running from the 19th of September through the 24th of
October 2009 at TORCH Gallery in Amsterdam. The opening is scheduled on the 19th of
September from 5pm-7pm, to coincide with the reopening of the gallery under new
directorship of Mo van der Have, son of Adriaan van der Have.
TORCH Gallery
94 Lauriergracht
1016 RN Amsterdam
Tel.020-6260284
Fax.020-6238892
Open from Thursday to Saturday from 13:00 till 18:00 hrs.