Sergey Skip

Where are you from, where are you based now and can you tell us a little about both?

Sure. I’m originally from the northern-west part of Russia which is called Karelia. It borders with Finland. So think of many lakes and forests, coldness, dark winters and white nights in summers. This country, my homeland, is quite know for some truly brilliant people and the works of art they have created, for beautiful nature, but also for dehumanization, terror and pain of its own population and its neighbors. I’m not fond of that country I come from, though I forever carry parts of it in me.

For the past eleven years, I’ve been based in Berlin. This is a much less of a grim place, a very nice place actually. A world’s cultural hub. Still an island of freedom and ease and a habitat to many many artists, though being shortened on that due to political and financial pressures expected nowadays from an average capital city of EU. Still that openness of Berlin nourished me, and it’s why I’ve been able to build an artistic practice here.

Your fine art photography has a dreamlike, altered reality and surrealist aesthetic. What inspires you to create these kinds of images?

I think it’s rooted in a search for capturing reflections of our inner worlds. I’m trying to find photographic qualities that make viewer’s body feel, rather than make their rational mind think. And in this way, I treat photography as something closer to painting, the difference is just in the tools I use. It’s created through photographic methods, but the aim is emotional and sensory, not documentary.

So what I put in my work is a mirror of my psyche. It is how I experience the world. Not visually, but viscerally. It is also a projection of states I’ve went through over many years spent gripped by wild paralyzing anxiety, endlessly swinging between one bad mental state into another. I thought that was just the way I was, and what will always follow me. And I didn’t have the language for it. Hence I guess the aesthetic I’m using, which feels natural to my grim and distorted experiences. Like the right mediator. Through it we can connect — not through logic or language, but on a deeper level. If I tried to explain them in words, I’d probably fail. And whoever listened won’t be able to understand either. But through images, maybe something else happens. Maybe a deeper connection becomes possible.

How do you balance abstraction and narrative in your work?

Currently, in an imbalanced way. Pure abstraction, barely any narrative. I try to make my work bypass the rational mind and go straight into the body. So the viewer might not understand it, but feel it. That means stripping away any sense of story, place, or social context. Just a theatre of bodies, existing in a deconstructed space.

Can you walk us through your creative process when developing a new series?

Sure. Its usually quite a spontaneous and improvisational start — some momentarily urge, lucky coincidence which leads into a studio shoot or sometimes performance shoot, and keeps being largely improvisational right until the last shot.

Then comes the part where I actually spend the most time: after the shoot. That’s when I really start shaping the work. I’m carving images and symbols meticulously from a digital negative through countless small tweaks, mostly to color and tonal values. Because even a slight tonal shift can completely change the emotional impact of the image.

You can probably see this in my latest projects: every shoot can result in a diverse constellation of styles. But together, these images form a kind of rhythm. And that rhythm is meant to be felt by your guts.

You work with photography, mixed media, and printmaking. How do these different mediums influence each other in your practice?

They don’t influence each other that much. Yet. Printmaking has definitely shaped the way I think about photography as objects, in terms of their physical representation. But I haven’t had many photography-related exhibitions so far, so I haven’t really had the opportunity to apply that knowledge in practice or experiment more fully with it. That said, it’s something I’m actively thinking about as part of the evolution of my practice.

You’ve collaborated with musicians like Peaches and Boy Harsher and performers such as Valentin Tszin. What draws you to working with said type artists?

First, there’s Valentin Tszin. He’s a Butoh artist, performer, actor, and teacher — I’ve worked with him several times and have known him for quite a while. I love collaborating with him. In many ways, I feel that what Valentin is doing through Butoh is very close to what I’m trying to do through visual art. Our practices feel aligned. There’s a kind of abstract emotional expressionism in what he’s doing that deeply resonates with me. I don’t know if he would fully agree with this comparison, but for me, there’s a shared language. Watching him perform affects me on a very deep level. We’ve already created some collaborative works, with more in production, and I hope we will continue working together. I’m also periodically attending his Butoh workshops to learn and experience the practice of it with my own body.

Then there’s my recent collaboration with Florentina Holzinger — specifically, photographing her powerful Sancta opera. That is more of a hybrid between documentation and artistic interpretation. Her work is already super intense and layered, and my goal wasn’t just to document it, but to translate how I experienced it. So even though I’m working within someone else’s artistic project, I try to craft something that channels my own emotional and visual response. It’s not just about capturing the performance — it’s about reinterpreting it, and strengthening some of its visuals affects.

When it comes to musicians like Peaches and Boy Harsher — music has always played a huge role in my life. I used to be an active musician myself and, before putting it on a very long pause. And taking a time to listen focused to some beautiful music always triggers visualisations in my head. So it feels natural to extend that admiration into my visual practice. Shooting shows is a way for me to channel the live experience into an image, to share with others how it felt during that moment, or maybe how it feels remembering it.

And in general I prefer to work with performers, dancers, theater actors because they make artistic expression through the mediums of their bodies. And then I combine that with my way of experiencing their art and reinterpreting it into something else, so then together we fuse our arts, and make them into a third new thing. And this is why these collaborations interest me the most.

Your installation at ∄ / k41 in Kyiv is a significant project. How did that collaboration come about?

Yes, it was a commissioned visual art project, actually unrelated to photography. It began from a mutual likening of our works with the club’s main architect Nikita (RHO Studio now; Studio Karhard back then). I was completely blown away by what they had created at the club — such a beautifully designed, thoughtful space that keeps surprising you throughout the day and night.

Through his invitation, the team entrusted me with creating a large-scale, 20-meter-wide installation that isolates part of the club into a kind of trippy decompression zone, a dream room.

The piece is still there. Sadly, Ukraine remains in the midst of a brutal, seemingly never-ending war. But the club continues to operate (only during the day and into the evening now, because of the war-induced curfew). I encourage everyone to visit the club, to visit Kyiv, and to support Ukraine’s defense and the Ukrainian people however they can.

What challenges do you face when translating your artistic vision into a large-scale installation?

There were many challenges. One of the biggest was figuring out how to create a highly detailed artwork for such a large format (20 by 3 meters). What does it even mean for the creative process when you’re working at that scale? How do people experience a piece like that in a space like K41? And how do you figure all of that out on short notice, without formal training in installation art, no prior experience, and not even a proper studio to test it in?

So a lot of it came down to imagination. And a lot of sleepless nights trying to make it work. Big part of the piece was created digitally, and the files became massive. I had to figure out my own workflow just to keep my machine from crashing and to get the artwork production-ready. The material research and figuring out production methods was also a challenge, especially since I had to do all of it at nights outside of my main job. Thankfully, the K41 team was incredibly supportive during the production phase.

What do you hope viewers take away from your art?

My hope is that my art makes the viewer feel something within themselves. Maybe it’s an itch they haven’t noticed before, or an emotion they cannot yet find a name for. And they would go on a journey discovering where that feeling comes from, what does it mean. And as a much more ambitious goal, I want to help them find their inner moral compass, the inner humanity.

And maybe, through that process of reconnecting with yourself: your body, your inner world — they can also feel more connected to others. I think it’s about touching something inside that resonates, something that makes you feel integrated within yourself.

What do you have planned for 2025?

I have a big queue of unfinished projects and I’m working on them one by one. So at least a dozen is due to be released. Then I’m planning to release two photobooks, one would be a summary of my work so far, and another one dedicated to shooting Florentina Holzinger’s Sancta. The material and part of a budget is there, I just need to sit myself down to design it into printable editions.

I also have different bodies of work starting to form into more cohesive, larger series that I’d like to exhibit. I believe some of my pieces have much more impact when they’re experienced physically. So yes, I hope to the right place(s) to make some exhibitions happen before the year ends.

Where can we find you online?

My photography work: Instagram @Sergeyskip
Other visual arts work: Instagram @Sergeyskip.visuals
And my website www.sergeyskip.com