"My work lives in the friction between the body and the environment,
pulling raw material through an evolutionary shift into a flat image."
pulling raw material through an evolutionary shift into a flat image."
“I’m trying to make images that don’t settle too quickly
Images that hold a familiar tension
Something between clarity and confusion, control and collapse
If the work does anything, it’s to slow down perception
To move away from fixed positions and into something more fluid, more felt”
Images that hold a familiar tension
Something between clarity and confusion, control and collapse
If the work does anything, it’s to slow down perception
To move away from fixed positions and into something more fluid, more felt”
I’m interested in what Keats called negative capability
the ability to remain within uncertainty without forcing an answer
In my work, ambiguity and visual abstraction create a similar space
I use intentional imperfections, surface disruption and incomplete information
to resist a fixed reading of an image
Meaning can then move through associations rather than arriving as a single conclusion
An image might suggest one thing, then become something else when placed against another image
I’m interested in that instability, where uncertainty doesn’t weaken meaning, but pushes it deeper
the ability to remain within uncertainty without forcing an answer
In my work, ambiguity and visual abstraction create a similar space
I use intentional imperfections, surface disruption and incomplete information
to resist a fixed reading of an image
Meaning can then move through associations rather than arriving as a single conclusion
An image might suggest one thing, then become something else when placed against another image
I’m interested in that instability, where uncertainty doesn’t weaken meaning, but pushes it deeper
FAQ (Nature vs Culture)
I’m not interested in hunting for the perfect moment.
I use photography to create new worlds within my perceived reality, to ask questions about memory, photography and its (re)presentation.
I use analogue and digital tools to create my work, and to explain the world to myself.
I also use the clone stamp and the lasso tool.
Instead of capturing emotion, I would rather evoke an emotional response within the viewer that is strangely familiar.
Trompe-l’œil. Making strange. Verfremdung. Alchemy.
I don’t work in linear series, but instead in one continuous and interwoven body of work, like a conversation that never stops.
New ideas are constantly added, shifting over time, reprising old ideas and adding new ones.
I’m not just interested in what is in front of the camera, but also what lies behind, underneath and just to the side of the frame.
Good ideas are more important than sharp and colourful pretty pictures.
Photographs should hardly ever be propped up with text.
This is also a lie.
The basic tenets of Gestalt Theory: Proximity. Similarity. Continuity. Closure. Connectedness.
Gut feelings through my one right eye.
I use the tools of video, photography and painting to create my art.
I can cite direct influences as coming from photographers Michael Schmidt, Roe Ethridge, the legendary John Divola and John Gossage.
Lucas Blalock and Robert Cumming. definately John Hilliard, Also Richard Tuttle.
An image taken with a smartphone is just as important as an image taken with a large-format view camera or a potato pinhole camera.
I knew all of this before, but was unable to express it.
I’m interested in sculpture and form, but my main concern is the transformation created by the camera. The thing becoming something else.
Photography as theatre
My work can be read as a sampler of photographic genres. Portrait, landscape, nude and still life images all sit next to each other to reveal and explore the medium and its limitations.
The only aspect of my process that I value is my intellectual curiosity through experimentation.
Strategy vs. Goal. The day I start knowing where the work is going I will stop.
An ode to effort.
My work is inside my body. Mind. Body. Technology.
I use what I find lying ‘around’ and convert and transform this debris through a kind of creative alchemy into a theatrical mise en scène.
This urban jetsam and flotsam comes with its own knowledge, a built-in aesthetic which I unearth and explore in my constructions.
I’m always trying to surprise myself, and come up with unsolvable pictures I haven’t seen before, to get beneath the surface.
This indecisive moment.
I believe in the power of the single image, but I’m currently more interested in the role of associative patterns and the contiguities of perception revealed when images are sequenced in a book or on a wall.
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© 2026 Nico Krijno
All images and content copyright Nico Krijno.