Kinke Kooi

In Kinke Kooi’s drawings the artist enlarges small subtleties to the level where viewing becomes a haptic experience. Her obsession with soft, undulating forms is evident in her sensuous, mesmerising works that in her own words prevent “the sharp from being sharp”. Formerly a painter, Kooi settled on drawing that in her hands takes on an organic quality; “Maybe it has to do with a longing for saturation, not knowing when to stop, on and on, time and again in the hope of finally reaching a limit. The bulges in my work emerge from that insatiable feeling.” Those bulges, formed of numerous fragile, swollen lines reconcile the distance between things and people. As Mirjam Westen, senior curator of contemporary art at Museum Arnhem noted; “Kooi’s attempt to fill things in, for all its apparent futility, can be meaningful and alluring.”

Kinke Kooi (b. 1961, Leeuwarden, Netherlands) attended the Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem where she still lives today. Her work is included in museum collections in the Netherlands (Museum Arnhem and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam) and various private collections in the United States, where she has exhibited regularly since 1995.