Nico Krijno
The South African artist Nico Krijno was planning a trip around the world when COVID-19 hit. He found himself stuck at home, in a farmhouse outside Cape Town, isolated from his wife and daughters and accompanied by only his two dogs, a scanner, and his extensive archive. Collages 2020–2022 (Art Paper Editions, 2022; 448 pages, €45)—Krijno’s latest and most substantial photobook—was borne out of frustration. Barred from going out to shoot, he began dismantling and recomposing his decade-old archive of photographs, ephemera, and discarded materials. The result is a maximalist doorstopper, edited by the graphic designer and publisher Jurgen Maelfeyt.
In , the reader is dropped into a thicket of visual material: prints of foliage and stone busts, mangled by scanning; ad spreads; archival photographs; and occasional interventions with paint. Images that are otherwise distinct in context, style, and source are stitched into grand and glitchy still lifes, reminiscent of the work of Lucas Blalock, John Divola, and Roe Ethridge. Despite each work’s rich detail, the overall project’s sequencing and size discourage meandering. Instead,
