/ ART PROFILE /
A unique vision Cape Town-based artist Nico Krijno works with several mediums to explore the process of creation and the spaces in between. BY JENNIFER CAMPBELL
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ontemporary artist Nico Krijno works with staged photography, collage, video and performance to create pieces that are nonlinear and playful. His creative process is an investigation of visual codes, symbols and patterns, as well as the history of the image. Nico has a background in theatre and experimental video but began to focus his energy on the visual arts around 2008. Through his work, he pushes the boundaries of various mediums, often exploring photography, performance and sculpture in unique ways. This creative process opens up intertextual dialogues between his artworks, which keeps the pieces surprising and challenging to the viewer. Nico often uses discarded found materials, which he reorganises and interprets in new ways. He believes this found debris to have its own built-in aesthetic, which can then be unearthed and explored through his constructions. While interested in sculpture and form, Nico’s primary concern, he says, is “the transformation created
by the camera – the thing becoming something else”. He loves the mystery of the creative process and describes his intellectual curiosity through experimentation as the only aspect of the process that he really values. “The day I start knowing where the work is going, I would stop,” he says. Nico works from his home on a farm outside Cape Town, where he lives with his wife and daughters. Some of his most recent works include a series of lockdown collages created during the pandemic in 2020. Like all of his work, the pieces are multi-layered and brightly coloured and take on a non-linear, lively aesthetic. Nico’s work has been shown locally and abroad and can be found in several public and private collections worldwide, including spaces in Amsterdam, New York, Buenos Aires and London. He works on private commissions, as well as commercial and editorial projects. Nico is currently finishing work on a book of his new collage work, which will be released in July. www.nicokrijno.com
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