(b.1975, Kherson, Ukraine)
Krytsiy’s photographic practice takes roots in the working-class context of Kherson, in South Ukraine. Inheriting a simple set of photographic equipment from his grandfather at the age of 13, Kritskiy’s artistic development combines years of seemingly juxtaposing multilayered experiences. These equally embrace an autodidactic study of music and drawing with operating a gantry crane at the local shipyard and working as a sailor and an aquarium manufacturer.
After relocating to Kyiv in 2001, Krytskiy has diligently dedicated his full time to photography and retouching, primarily focusing on landscape photography, and portraits, while playfully reinterpreting a culturally specific genre of wedding photography. Productively blurring everyday distinctions between photography, retouching and manual labor, Kritskiy`s practice combines the pragmatic necessities of the transitional post-soviet Ukraine with the aesthetics of cultural production in times of highly unstable and violent presence.