A biannual magazine exploring light in all its forms
‘It’s an electro-bricolage process that’s very difficult to tease apart: it’s constantly shifting like a conversation that never stops.’ Interview with South African artist Nico Krijno about his photography, collages and experiments.
THE LIGHT OBSERVER : You were born in South Africa and still live there. Do you see any of its influences in your work? Would you say this setting is somehow reflected in your work?
NICO KRIJNO : Yes I most definitely see how my surroundings play a huge role and have a direct influence on my work. South Africa is rugged and very wild and free compared to Europe.
How is the art scene in Cape Town and more generally in South Africa?
I guess it depends what medium of art you are making. I think photography is slowly becoming more relevant locally, but painting and sculpture with a politically charged theme is still favoured. I don’t really operate within the local art scene. I also don’t see myself as a South African artist. I’m just an artist from South Africa. I feel it can be limiting. My work is mainly collected in Europe, the States and elsewhere. There are very little resources for the arts in South Africa; there is no real budget or support from the local government. That said, there are some very exciting artists doing very interesting things locally. And I’m very excited to see how things will evolve in the next few years.
How did you get started as an artist? What were your first artworks like?
I guess I started when I was about 13 years old. I had a Minolta SR-T 101 given to me by my mother, and I started taking very formal and serious black-and-white pictures in the small town where I grew up. Mostly portraits of the locals and abstract architectural studies. I never thought I would become a photographer. I always wanted to make films, tell stories. I have a background in stage and theatre, and I majored in Film and Media Studies, with a focus on cinematography and directing. I was also a commercial video editor for many years in Cape Town and London. It took many years to get to this point. And everything I did before prepared me for the work I’m doing now. The theatrics, the cinematography, the acting, music making – it’s all come together in my day-to-day creative practice. My work has evolved a lot over the years, and I hope it will continue to do so. I’m always looking for the next avenue to explore and visual problems to solve.
When did you start mixing different mediums together? How did this become your style, your way of working?
I guess about two years ago I started incorporating and started sharing works I’ve been working on and thinking about for the past few years. The Lockdown Collage series is all made on an Epson scanner. There is no Photoshop involved. I have a very large archive of images I’ve collected over the years. I don’t ever use any images from the internet. I then move the images around on the scan bed as the beam slowly moves across – so I guess you can say the collages are made ‘live’ and I don’t do anything to them in post. I hardly ever crop them. I sometimes draw and paint on the images. Cut them up. It’s a very freeing process. There are two strands of images that run parallel in my work, like a layered mesh, there’s the seemingly straight and stable images – i.e. of a landscape with relatable information – and then there’s the more abstract, montage-type images. When I make a digital collage image that is completely staged, which forms about 98 per cent of my practice, then I would always collage both digitally and in the flesh. I make about 10 plates to end with one single image – so I’m constantly changing the lighting and arrangement of objects for the camera, skewing perspectives, overlapping shadows, adding, subtracting, intersecting and interleaving the photographic information. It always starts with an image idea in my head, or a sketch, dominant vectors, etc. The more straight images are scenes in nature that I seek out that are like field notes, and then later I decide how and where to use these works. Sometimes they are resolved as is, but most of the time I would make subtle changes to the surface information. Representation is then reinforced by the sequential presentation, as the images become dependent upon one another for their interpretation, where the layered information hopefully attempts to make us aware of the problems of the camera and the single image’s ability to represent a multi-sensuous reality.
How would you say you’re playing with images, and by consequence their meanings, codes and symbols?
My focus is directly linked to scrambling and subverting the spatial information within the frame and photography’s perceived role in communicating and creating a world in which we live, by compressing and challenging the visual information, as a direct response to the perceived referential use of everyday conventional photography. To highlight the absurdity in the visual representation of reality, by including the strangeness and ambiguity, and in this process the constructed reality of our daily lives. I’m personally not so interested in the photo becoming a sculptural object; I’m very interested in the flatness and transformation of the viewing plane created by the camera. The flat photographic print is manageable and harmonious in its simplicity. In my case creating a world for the camera representing more the inner world and not a vision of reality, where time is stretched and scrambled and new realities are fabricated, borders are contrived and crumbling. So in the context of a book or an exhibition you can say I’m more interested in playfully blurring and working with the limitations of the medium by manipulating the surface of the print or the negative, than moving beyond the rectangular flat print and creating sculptural interventions in a space. The world within the rectangular frame becomes a stage rather than a window into the world.
You often say you enjoy experimenting and playing in your artistic approach. What does it allow you to explore?
The image is done when it matches or somehow becomes greater than the version I imagined in my head. I have to first find or create the objects to use in the frame – and from there on, it’s a dance to see how the objects react together, the mistakes and limitations of the process, as well as the effort involved in the making becomes very important as part of the outcome. I work outside in the harsh sun and wind so all of these factors play into the scheme. It’s an electro-bricolage process that’s very difficult to tease apart: it’s constantly shifting like a conversation that never stops, new ideas are constantly added, shifting over time, reprising old ideas and adding new ones. I’m interested in photographs that serve up uncanny, unreliable evidence about a fragmented reality, and not just the world in front of the lens but also a world behind the lens, as a vehicle for unique artistic expression, with an emphasis on process and performance over the finished product.
What interests you about collages?
To be honest I don’t really think too much about the medium and its history – I’m merely concerned with making images that serve up something new. These scan collages run parallel to my staged-straight-traditional photography practice.
What kind of materials are you looking for to create your artworks?
Materials that are heavy that want to be light. Materials laden with meaning, materials that are disregarded, discarded, ugly, beautiful, surprising, comical. Materials with a patina, with colour that captures the light. Materials that are asking me to be photographed.
