Photographer Daniel Grizelj works with staged photography. His images are constructed by visual rebuses.

One could draw parallels to the photographer Gregory Crewdson, but unlike his repetitive aesthetic and relentless flirting with UFO culture, there is no paranormal drama in Grizelj photography. The people of Grizelj pictures look either out to be obsessively preoccupied of what they are doing or on the run from the given situation. But escape is of course possible. On the outside of the image is another image, and a different picture. Everything turns into a perpetual theater where the script has long been lost. Grizelj dark absurdism had been darker than what it is, if not the humor had lightened up the mood. A sense of humor that is often reminiscent of Jacques Tati critique of modern man’s captivity in an overly refined culture.

Grizelj also works with time as the subject. The plays often played out on an inner mental scene. But the common denominator seems to be the meaningless repetitive actionwhich we find in Lafcadio who kill without any real sense of Gides Caves the Vatican or Bartlebooths mysterious puzzle submission of Perec “Life is a manual”. In Grizelj cases seems these characters come from a narcissistic society who lost contact me himself. The characters are reduced to puppets who try to pull in their own topics, find new meaning, a new master, or a way to kill the champion for to become masters of their own lives. Simply build stories in history, or dreams in the dream.

Aesthetically, inscribes itself in the images a painterly chiaroscuro tradition dating far down to Caravaggio’s theatrical lighting dark painting. But there is no trace of Christian symbolism – only a fateful mystery that neither asks you some simple questions or identifiable comes with some easy-consuming response. If the world is a stage and life is just a tale told by an idiot, you get to decide of whether the story is a comedy or a tragedy.

Written by Sinziana Ravini – Curator

Represented by BIRGITTA MARTIN in Stockholm.