biography
Koen Hauser (the Netherlands, 1972) is an artist who works with photography and film, in an artistic practice that revolves around the relations between the way he processes photographic material and psychological and philosophical themes. Incorporating or paraphrasing the archival, his work entwines philosophy, mythology, psychology and spirituality.He finished his masters of science in social psychology (1996, Leiden University), later followed by studying photography at the Royal Academy of Art and the Gerrit Rietveld Academy (2002). This academic background might explain for his interest in the tension between the scientific and the emotional, the visual and the metaphysical.
He frequently collaborates with different cultural institutes, museums and archives such as the National Archive, gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Rijksmuseum. Both in commissioned and autonomous projects he uses or references objects or stories from their collections. In working with the Spaarnestad photo archive, that houses over 16 million press images, he created his acclaimed book de Luister van het Land, which was nominated ‘Best verzorgde boek’ in the Netherlands.
As an art teacher he worked at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Willem de Kooning Academy. He currently teaches at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague.
He received several grants from the Mondriaan Fund, and was awarded the title ‘photographer of the Netherlands’ in 2014. His work is held in both national and international public and private collections, including gemeentemuseum (the Hague) and the museum of fine arts (Houston). His work has been shown across Europe, the United States and China in various solo and group exhibitions including FOAM (Amsterdam), Unseen Photo Fair (Amsterdam), Institut Néerlandais (Paris) and the He Xiang Ning Art Museum (Shigzen, China).