Kim Köster (German, b. 1981) creates paintings that leave room for ambiguity and unresolved questions, inviting the viewer to engage with the unknown. Born in the artists' colony of Worpswede in northern Germany, he grew up surrounded by dark forests and moors that shaped his interest in melancholic, uncanny themes.
At a young age, Köster travelled through Europe, Australia, Canada and South America, working in abandoned industrial ruins.As part of the collective Rostlaub, he photographed and painted an abandoned factory in Berlin for 99rooms, a web-based project that animated more than a hundred of his images with sound and Flash. He has said the whole project “grew, just part by part”, with no concept from the beginning.In 2006, he was recognized at the Flash Forward Film Festival in Seattle, and in 2011 he was nominated for a Webby Award.
In 2020, Köster moved his workspace from abandoned spaces into a studio and began working primarily in acrylic on canvas. Recent series such as Swirl of the Damned and Taumeln continue this exploration in acrylic on canvas. His paintings have been shown in group exhibitions including “REKOLLEKT” at Kunstraum Bethanien in Berlin in 2012, “W-Retro” at the Seoul Museum of Art in 2019, and “Digitalart-Analog” at Galeria 03one in Belgrade in 2024. He has said, “I want my pictures to provoke the imagination and raise questions. Because the unresolved, the fragmentary, and the ambiguous come closest to the essence of our reality.”
