Nile Koetting
Mood Board II
26 Sept. – 1 Nov. 2026

“The arcades are a center of commerce in luxury items.
In fitting them out, art enters the service of the merchant.”¹

A mannequin dressed in black in the mens‘ department, completely dipped in red. The “interiéur rouge“ is one of three impressions captured in pastel crayons of the Bon Marché in Paris: Europe’s first department store, a “cathedral of modern commerce“,² as Émile Zola wrote. Pastel hues are said to be light and airy. They appear harmonious, calming, elegant, like the interior of the fine department store, its displays, its cafés and its luxury goods. The department store, founded in 1838 by the Videau brothers, is now a part of the Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH), the world’s foremost luxury goods group.

Other impressions in green, violet and blue follow. The pictures are behind glass, which makes them “glossy“ and “shiny“, like the surfaces of tablets and smartphones. The rounded corners of the sheets of acrylic glass amplify this impression. We glide along the surfaces, from the goods to the images on our mobile devices. Our eyes and fingers merge the dream worlds that we share with each other. Our impressions become collective memories. “It is by following the border, by skirting the surface, that one passes from bodies to the incorporeal“,³ as Gille Deleuze postulates. Praising the surface, which is blown up infinitely.

What were still “streets“ in Walter Benjamin‘s Arcades Project, a “dwelling of the collective”,⁴ are now the “stories“ on our smartphones. They invite us to stroll. In this, then as now: “For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.“⁵ An aesthetics of blurriness and of disappearance, as on the large pastel image in blue, which more suggests than shows several pedestals for clothing racks or lamp tripods. The image is almost abstract – “so nice“.

Several of the pastel drawings in the exhibition are protected with additional sheets of acrylic glass. They form a display. Snowflakes were sprayed onto the sheets. The decoration anticipates the coming season – winter magic. From afar, a snowman on the window display smiles at the passers-by. He’s melting away – “so cute“.

In the middle of the room there lies a bollard with a barrier tape, the kind we know from airports or museums – serving as a barrier or system to guide visitors. Relieved of its actual task, the bollard turns slowly in a circle, as if guided by a magical hand. It rests every so often, and then sets itself in motion again – a choreographed break at the centre of the exhibition. The smartphone also seems to pause, at least in pastels on the wall. The violet painting could also be read from this perspective. It shows a kind of mindmap, without it being possible to discern the content – an aesthetics of blurriness, of disappearance. It is thus no coincidence that Nile Koetting‘s pastel pictures address so-called non-places – spaces of transit and anonymised interaction.

Mood Board II is the continuation of his “impressionism“ series, as he calls it, not without a certain irony. Jade Meili Barget writes: “Koetting’s impressionism isn’t just about plays of light or contemporary natural landscapes. For him, impressionism is a deeply current mode of expression, one he links to performativity in today’s economy of attention and imagery.”⁶ Influenced by his work as a performance artist, his works are infused with subtle theatrical structure. They explore how reality forms under the influence of technological systems and social dynamics.

1 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Paris, capitale du XIXe siècle, 1935), Harvard University Press
   Cambridge 2002, p. 3.
2 Émile Zola, The Ladies‘ Paradise, Vizetelly & Co. London 1886 (Au Bonheur des Dames, Paris 1883), Chapter 9.
3 Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (Logique du sens, 1969), Columbia University Press New York 1993, p. 10.
4 Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. V.1, p. 524.
5 Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life (Le Peintre de la vie moderne, 1863), in: The Painter of Modern
   Life, and Other Essays, Phaidon Press London 1964, p. 9.
6 Jade Meili Barget, press text for Nile Koetting, Mood Board, Parliament, Paris, 11 June–19 July 2025.

Text: Holger Otten / Translation: Nancy Chapple