Thomas Kuijpers

Photographer

Thomas Kuijpers (b. 1985) is a visual artist whose work explores the role of contemporary medianarratives within our perception of the actual world. During his studies at the MFA Photography at AKV St. Joost (Breda, NL), where he graduated in 2011, he developed an interest in the way a representation of an event arises, and in the way in which this is communicated to us. The observable friction between this conveyed version of reality and the place it occupies in daily life is the most important starting point of his works. In order to take a stand in this matter, Kuijpers often follows (contemporary) events or phenomena over a prolonged period of time. The gathering and mapping of events that are interesting to him is a daily routine. The work often originates from a personal event, in which Kuijpers feels this media reality touches his 'offline' reality. A visual paradigm is build around the conclusions drawn from the collected material, in which Kuijpers reacts to this conclusion through a range of different experiments that mostly still contain direct visual references to the collected narrative. The approach is different each time, but always critical, challenging the viewer to review in which ways the media-realities have merged with our daily lives. In 2017 Kuijpers was selected as Foam Talent and was nominated for several awards. In recent years he presented his work in venues like Fotopub Festival (Novo Mesto), Casa Laurinda (Rio de Janeiro), B.A.D. (Brussel), Lishui Photography Festival and Krakow Photomonth Festival. He also exhibited his work in renowned places like Museum Arnhem, MASP (Sao Paulo), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and Foam Photography Museum (Amsterdam). Kuijpers’ work is part of the collection of Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) and several private collectors. Currently living and working in Aarle-Rixtel (NL) and Ghent (BE).