Artist Statement – Kristin Grahn Kyono

My work is a meditation on the layered visual language of urban environments. I’m drawn to the tension and harmony between engineered structures and natural forms — a dynamic that plays out in the human-made landscapes we often move through without pause. Cities, in their complexity, offer a rich terrain of cultural expression, fragmentation, and surprising beauty.

While I reference cities across the globe, my primary subject is San Francisco and the Bay Area — the places where I live, walk, and observe. These daily encounters present a visual cacophony: signage, facades, transit lines, utility cables — all competing for space, all revealing something about the people and systems that shape a neighborhood. My practice involves parsing this complexity in search of rhythm, pattern, and a sense of coherence beneath the apparent chaos.

I work across photography, printmaking, drawing, and painting, often layering analog and digital processes. Photographs taken during my walks become raw material: I digitally collage and abstract them, using shape, line, and repetition to construct a new visual architecture. Through cycles of addition and erasure — both on screen and by hand — I arrive at compositions that evoke the energy, memory, and visual density of place.

Each piece is both a visual reconstruction and an emotional register — not a documentation, but a reframing of the overlooked. My aim is to invite wonder, recognition, and a deeper engagement with the environments we inhabit every day.