Collages 2020-2022

Collages 2020-2022 – Nico Krijno is a South African artist who uses photography, collage and video as part of a performance-based practice that investigates contemporary visual codes, symbols and patterns as well as the history of the image.

On paper, Collages 2020-2022 may seem a peculiar object to accommodate Nico Krijno’s work. By virtue of its form, a book is finite, a neat vessel that lends itself to those narratives with a beginning and end. Krijno’s work, however, is not finite; it has no resolution or discernible moments that can be easily pointed at, bound and labelled. And neither does it ebb or flow in tidy rhythms but accumulates, constantly and relentlessly. If anything, Krijno’s work feels — as it always has — more akin to some outpouring of seemingly blithe, childlike play: disorientating and fantastical, and at times almost absurd, but wondrous nevertheless. It is this outpouring though that puts Krijno’s work at odds with the book.⁠