Stories about cannabis, insects, the credit crunch and polar expeditions. Through photography, sound and video, Joachim Koester explores hidden aspects of the mind and of our collective history.

In the exhibition Joachim Koester – Patterns, Shimmers, Scenes you can follow the artist on a journey through collective consciousnesses and histories.

From inner to external journeys The exhibition starts of in the hidden corners of the human mind. Like in the series From the Secret Garden of Sleep that features images of cannabis plants, brimming with sap, promising the euforic expansion of one’s consciousness.

Like recollections hidden deep in a consciousness, so are traces from previous generations hidden in the structures of a city. The series Some Boarded Up Houses has it’s jump off in the financial crisis of 2007. Abandoned and blocked off houses stand as monuments for the American housing bubble and the lack of accountability of the global financial market.

Koester draws a parallel from the blocked off houses to sucked dry insects caught in a web of transactions that still to this day controls the global economy.