Juxtapoz Magazine – A Portfolio: Nik Christensen
On today’s A Portfolio, we look at the works of UK-based, Japanese influneced artist, Nik Christensen.
Nik Christensen (born 1973, Bromley, Kent UK) currently lives and works in Amsterdam where he graduated from the Rietveld Academie in 2000.
Influenced by cinema, literature and Japan’s Ukiyo-e masters, Nik Christensen creates large-scale, powerfully atmospheric, black and white ink drawings and paintings. Exploring the friction between the real and imaginary, he looks for new interpretations, deconstructing and reconfiguring that which looks familiar. Executed in black sumi ink, a wide range of Japanese brushes and airbrush. Of working in a medium that morphs as it dries, he has said, “It’s that slight loss of control that captivates me.”
Over the last 10 years he has spent long periods of time in Kamiyama, a small mountainous town in Tokushima, Japan, where he keeps a studio. This has allowed him to further research the many different Japanese materials he uses; brushes, inks and washi papers, all of which have become increasingly more specific to his practice. Christensen’s work is held in the collections of Gemeente Museum Den Haag, Stedelijk museum Schiedam and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs among others, as well as major public and private collections internationally
