Eric Bell & Kristoffer Frick

Eric Bell and Kristoffer Frick create meticulously staged photographic and video works that explore how objects function as carriers of meaning within systems of design, symbolism, and cultural production. Their collaborative practice centers on constructing hyper-real still lifes and spatial compositions using found, fabricated, or repurposed items—ranging from therapeutic instruments to industrial tools—carefully arranged to evoke layered psychological and ideological narratives. Rather than treating photography as a documentary tool, they use it as a conceptual framework to examine how aesthetics shape perception and value. Each composition is carefully lit and composed, turning mundane or utilitarian objects into charged icons that suggest anxiety, aspiration, and coded belief systems. Their installations operate as speculative environments in which objects are both familiar and estranged, inviting viewers to decode how form, material, and context influence interpretation. Through visual precision and conceptual rigor, Bell and Frick investigate the politics of display, the semiotics of consumerism, and the architecture of desire. Their work ultimately reveals how visual culture constructs meaning—challenging the boundaries between image and artifact, function and fiction, reality and simulation. ...