C.A. Barnikol

C. A. Barnikol was born in Giessen in 1962. He initially studied biomedical engineering in Giessen and worked at the municipal clinics in Wiesbaden. In 1989, he took a position at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen in the University Library and Information Management department. Since 2011, however, he has been intensively engaged with experimental photography, digital art, and sculpture in various projects. He lives and works in Giessen. The artist C. A. Barnikol not only pursues aesthetic interests with his art, but also conducts aesthetic research that touches on both technical and scientific issues. Various series explore the boundaries of photography, painting, sculpture, and sound, digital and analog media, and vision itself. In the tension between chaos and reduction, space and time, the visible and processes of change, error occurences, and dissolution, the artist continually discovers new forms and potential meanings for his works. For him, crossing the boundaries of the familiar, engaging with the environment and projects such as “Digital Transience” are invitations to the viewers of his works to discover new things for themselves and to adopt new perspectives. In the latter project, for example, the artist deletes digital symbols and replaces them with others that were actually always latently present. In doing so, he makes previously invisible dimensions visible, posing the question to the audience whether this mechanism might also apply to ordinary vision. These are questions that transcend the boundaries of aesthetics and art and already reach into the realm of physics. In doing so, he also touches on a core of artistic self-conception, which has been evident since the Renaissance and with artists such as Leonardo da Vinci. C. A. Barnikol has been exhibiting regularly since 2018. He has been represented internationally by LDXArt Gallery since 2025.