You Are The Observer by Lena Koester

Artudio, Centre for visual arts hosted Lena Koester’s first solo exhibition, You Are The Observer in Artudio’s own space, Chhauni Hospital Road, Swoyambhu, Kathmandu from 9 – 13 September, 2016. The exhibition was curated by contemporary visual artist Kailash K Shrestha.

Curatorial Note

Lena Koester is a contemporary artist from Germany. Since summer 2015 she is travelling to engage with international art scenes and learn from new artistic approaches and concepts. She started her creative work in Nepal in autumn 2016, being strongly inspired by Kathmandu, using only materials collected from the streets of the city for her artwork.

You Are The Observer will turn the viewer into an explorer. The everyday object will be observed in a new way, eye-opening to the unique aesthetics and great value of the small things that surrounds us all the time. You Are The Observer approaches to give a new angle to the viewer’s perception. To not feel limited by what we might not have, but rather to acknowledge what is already there and focus on it’s possibilities.

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Lena Koester

Born in Hamburg, Germany, she started to study Graphics/Design at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, feeling more and more excited to create artistic work in the studio. Since summer 2015 she has been travelling to observe international art scenes, engage and get inspired by foreign artistic development and art communities all over the world. For one year she has been travelling in Europe and growing as an artist through the experience.

She considers herself an observer with a strong tendency to collect, categorize and reconstruct everything that catches her attention.

She is influenced by visual attractions, but simultaneously collect words, emotions or exceptional sensations, such as a smell which recalls a memory, or a material which by the touch of the hand excited one about the future.

She quotes, “I experience destruction to be just as much part of creation, to break something into it’s tiniest parts and link it together with another thing, or to find new connections by rearranging it.”

At the moment her work with very natural materials, especially the earthy smell and colors appeal to her, but she loves to mix these with a counterpart, a bleach, a strong chemical, for instance, and to develop this unlikely relationship.

She equally likes to invent, try to play with the elements, reshape things beyond recognition, to melt plastics, bring paint to boil on canvas, leave coils to soak in a bag filled with water and oil, leave something organic to rot and explore all it’s states and changes.

Furthermore she experiments with being guided as an artist, by sounds, for instance, by the material itself, or a strong inner emotion. This is the foundation her art is grounded on.

Her website: a-new-kind-of-home.com