Window Installation: Dubai
29 photographs, framed
Vinyl window
Unique
Charlie Koolhaas’ works seek to capture the humanity of something that is inevitably in transition, displaying surprising moments of spontaneity within formal arrangements. She explores what happens to people, animals, and nature, the ways in which different individuals assert themselves in a city and how it in turn is shaped by their interaction. Koolhaas’ photographs hold precious moments of humanity in the modern megalopolis.
She was co-curator with her father Rem Koolhaas of the exhibition Dubai Next for Vitra Design Museum.
Koolhaas focuses her work on cities, but only as a backdrop for its inhabitants. Even seemingly mundane urban scenes allude to past dramas. Her photographs capture how cities are always changing and accumulating new layers and more traces of intertwining stories. It is an archaeology of past glories, achievements and conflicts that say something about how different cultures surmount problems and control chaos.
Koolhaas seeks to capture the humanity in something which is in transition and to show surprising moments of spontaneity within formal arrangements; what ‘happens’ to the people, animals, and nature, the ways in which different individuals assert themselves in a city and how it is shaped by their interaction.
She often photographs the disused, decayed and broken. Parts of the environment where different influences have caused contamination, conversations, cracks, styles and surfaces that meet and corrupt each other over time. Within her work, we find that brokenness is a sign that intense forces have come into collision, a reminder of the pain and suffering of our environment (emotional and physical). She records the ruptures that expose the internal workings of a system, or are a sign of aspirations dashed. These moments of failure force people to make endless reinventions. |
