The Artwork of Niko Kok

Born in the Netherlands, Niko Kok is a Dutch visual artist who works in multiple mediums. From 1973 to 1978, he studied in the sculpture department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. Strongly influenced during the 1940s and 1950s by the Brauhaus and De Stijl movements, the Gerrit Rietveld Academie focuses on the artist’s individual expression and the role and influence of autonomous visual art.

Kok brings a nearly fifty-year career in the steel industry to his artwork. In 1972, he began his employment at Tata Steel IJmuiden where he had the unique opportunity to engage with a diverse range of materials. This exposure increased Kok’s creative spirt and allowed him to devise new techniques for his artwork, including the employment of graphite crucibles, formerly used to measure nitrogen levels in steel, as a tool for his rubbings on paper. 

Over forty years, Niko Kok has transformed ordinary shapes and materials into visual creations by using the specific properties of his chosen material in multiple and often unusual ways. The recurring themes that underlie his aesthetic ideology are simplicity and contrast. Kok has worked with stone, paper, fabric, metal, glass, wood shards, and both steel and iron wire. He has also created rubbings and geometrically designed works with graphite and paper; his Tear Series combined different pieces of torn paper arranged in patterns with added graphite effects. 

A pivotal point in Niko Kok’s artistic career occurred during his travel in 1979 to Centre Pompidou in Paris. He visited the former atelier of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, an artist whose work had emphasized clean geometrical lines and the inherent properties of the materials used. Kok is also inspired by the Minimal Art movement, an extreme form of abstract art that emerged in the late 1950s and flourished into the 1970s. Minimalism saw art as its own reality. No attempt was made to represent an outside experience or emotion; the artwork’s medium and its form was the reality. 

From 1990 to 2006, Kok created a series of small sculptures using black, white and red granite. The “Double Cube”, “Column” and “Stacking” series were fashioned of either polished or unpolished granite stones fitted together to form perfectly squared sculptures of various heights. Using his knowledge of material properties, Kok has also worked with granite spheres, a shape capable of motion in every direction. Once the sphere is bisected, the two existing hemispheres each possess stability. Even after being pushed off balance, their equilibrium brings them back to rest.

Among his exhibitions, Niko Kok presented his graphic work at a 2012 exhibition at the Swiss Art Space in Lausanne, Switzerland. Hie participated in a solo exhibition at Artphy in 2019 held at Onstwedde, Netherlands. In the following year, Kok was part of a collaborative Artphy exhibition held in the same city. He currently lives and maintains a studio in the Dutch town of Heemskerk, Netherlands. 

Kok’s work has been exhibited and sold through the Alfa Gallery, an artist-operated space with locations in both the Miami Design District and the Chelsea area of New York City. His website, which include images of his work and contact information, can be found at: https://nicokok.exto.org

Top and Bottom Insert Images: Nico Kok, “Self Portrait”, 1988, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Middle Insert Image: Niko Kok, “Cubes and Cubes”, 2018, Plastic on Base, 96 x 96 x9.4 cm, Private Collection