Many Loving Arms

The paintings, sculptures and tapestries of colourful creatures with moving arms draw you into a world where softness, vulnerability and hope take center stage. Bas Kosters (1977) offers an embrace as a counterbalance to the suppressed humanity in contemporary politics.

The work is exuberant and intimate, light-footed yet sharp. Kosters invites you into a world where everyone can take up space, reinvent themselves and sometimes lean on a thousand imaginary arms. His art offers ways to explore fundamental questions: how do you find safety, how do you make space for yourself, how do you live with vulnerability and desire? Themes such as loneliness, self-love, sensuality and queerness gain a visual language in Kosters’ work that is both gentle and incisive. His work shows how imagination, humor and softness can become forces of resistance.

Cover image: Bas Kosters, installation view of An Exercise in Joy, Artzaanstad, 2025