Her practice falling somewhere between compulsive activity and meditation, KINKE KOOI surrounds the subjects of her drawings and altered photographs with a dense buildup of fine lines that radiate outwards like beacons or form turbulent eddies rippling around the central image. Adorning, patterning, and obsessively adding on, Kooi bestows alternate lives on ordinary words, things, and places: Houses and bodies appear as containers for light, a glance becomes a cumulus cloud of lines swagged with pearls; symbols of strength and masculinity acquire new meanings; apathy becomes lust, disgust becomes jouissance. “These days I am thinking a lot about straight lines versus curved lines, male energy vs. female energy, day vs. night, status vs. lack of status, visibility vs. invisibility, essential vs. inessential, certainty vs. doubt. I have always been interested in the in-between and in invisibility. And I am wondering what the world would look like without status.”