The makers of Tlon / The Poet

The visual artist Viktor Koen is distinguished for the particular style of his works in the field of graphic arts, mainly illustrations, but also digital image processing. In many of these series, imaginative forms combined with a multitude of disparate elements create an uncanny and enigmatic universe which is masterfully rendered with the aid of digital technology. One such series is the Metempsychoses, which includes Skelefron (2000) and Stenogaster (2000). There, Koen illustrates 24 portraits of figures bearing human and insect features, depicting senior officials and high-ranking bureaucrats returning to life as sinister, often nightmarishly deconstructed, insects. These characters ultimately personify symbols and 'weapons' of their former professional lives, fulfilling a critique, on behalf of their creator, of aggressive patterns of corporate behaviour and environments in which the choice of ethical, humane or just behaviour seems impossible.