About the artist
Christiaan Kritzinger is a multi-skilled audio-visual professional who earned an MTech in Photography from Nelson Mandela University.
He works as a director, camera operator, and editor in the film and television industry. His work has received multiple nominations for various film, television and art awards in South Africa and the USA. Kritzinger was a finalist in the 2018 Absa L'Atelier.
Meltdown: New Aesthetics in Old Landscapes
Photographic inkjet prints - 2018
During 2017, South Africa was heavily affected by a protracted severe drought, likely a result of climate change. Cape Town potentially could have become the first global cities to run out of water. Meanwhile, in other locations across South Africa, waterlessness is already un fait accompli. The agricultural sector is struggling to deliver produce, thousands are without work, and the dust bowl creeps towards the urban end. The socio-economic impacts are severe, but more so is how drought is written on the land, as the terrestrial vernacular shifts to verbalise dessication. In this, a new aesthetic is revealing itself. This triptych forms part of a long term project that sets out to document these changes, in the landscape and community. The work is strongly influenced by more detached compositional qualities of Stephen Shone, Deadpan and the new topographics photography movements - characteristics that will highlight a less than optimistics vernacular.
