The Ravestijn Gallery presented all new works from two of its artists at UNSEEN Amsterdam: Ruth van Beek and Nico Krijno. Both artists’ preoccupations lie with the possibility of making a truly new image. They question the connotations of surface and meaning by engaging their images in unexpected conversations, both poetic and full of humour. Whereas Van Beek assembles her images from her archive and new images appear within the arranged encounter of archival footage, Krijno manipulates his images digitally and leaves room for the messy, as to purposefully leave room for the accident from which new images come forth. By presenting these artists’ works side by side at Unseen 2017, The Ravestijn Gallery provides an aesthetically appealing insight into the status of image making and the ever vigorous inventiveness of photography.
Ruth van Beek (1977) presented her latest series The Situation Room at The Ravestijn Gallery, in which collages, paper cuts form an enticing setting where found footage and a personal archive amalgamate into something strange and altogether wonderful. The artist collects and assembles her images by hand, cutting and rearranging them into new settings, simultaneously establishing surprising, and often humorous, conversations between the images and inviting the viewer to discover previously undiscovered worlds and mysterious connections.
Her work was shown worldwide in various solo and group exhibitions. Among others: FOMU (BE), ETAL Gallery, (VS), The Ravestijn Gallery (NL), Les rencontres d’Arles (FR), Flowers Gallery (UK) and Fraenkel Gallery (VS) Works have been featured in magazines such as Foam Magazine, IMA Magazine, The British Journal Of Photography, The Aperture Photobook Review, Financial Times, Elephant Magazine and The NewYork Times. She has published several artist books, in 2017 her latest book The Cast, was published by NewDocuments in LA. In collaboration with Centerfold Editions, she is working on an ongoing series of artist publications called The Manual, of which three have come out so far. Ruth van Beek is represented by The Ravestijn Gallery in Amsterdam.
Nico Krijno (1981), a photographer and sculptor, previously presented ‘Under Construction’, a collection of digitally manipulated ‘objects’, maquettes and sculptures. Krijno uses digital tools to push the boundaries of our understanding of what a photographic image is, especially when it seems to represent three-dimensional objects and spaces. There is painstaking attention to the materiality and ‘matter’ in his work, and just when the viewer establishes an understanding of semblance, or of representation, this relation collapses, thus safekeeping the sense of wonder one encounters when looking at this artist’s work. Krijno’s images are never illustrations, rather they are inventions: an image that was not there before and escaped almost as if by accident.
Krijno lives and works in South Africa. His first solo show, 'On How To Fill Those Gaps' in late 2011 - and the accompanying self published book - was widely lauded and selected works has since been included in group shows in Edinburgh, Milan, Los Angeles, San-Francisco, Glasgow & London. He was nominated for the Paul Huf Award 2015. Krijno was selected as one of the 20 FOAM talents of 2016.
