Abstract nominee

Between Surface and Light is a long-term project that explores an “other way of seeing” water. Across the series Sergiy applies one consistent, hand-crafted colour transformation - a crafted palette - to every image. The shift is not decorative; it is a method. Familiar tones are moved into an altered spectrum so that colour begins to describe structure, depth, and flow.

In this palette, ordinary surfaces become strange terrains: currents read like brushstrokes, reflections fracture into geometry, and sediments turn into luminous fields. Plants, minerals, and passing fish appear only as occasional anchors of scale, then dissolve back into pattern. By keeping the transformation consistent, the work asks how perception changes when colour is treated as information rather than embellishment - and how abstraction can emerge from close attention to the thin interface between water and light.

Sergiy Antonenko is a Ukrainian fine-art photographer based in A Coruña, Spain. His work focuses on remote and fragile landscapes shaped by water - ice, sea, mist, and thin reflective surfaces - where human presence feels small and temporary. He develops long-term series that move between documentary attention and minimal abstraction, using the camera to slow down encounters with places that are usually passed through quickly.

His series Icebergs, made during winter voyages in Greenland, received a PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris 2025 Bronze Award (Nature/Water). The Water Between Us, photographed in the floating village of Ganvié in Benin, was shortlisted for PX3 State of the World 2025. His current body of work, Between Surface and Light, applies a consistent crafted colour transformation to everyday water surfaces, revealing an “other” spectrum in which reflections, plants, fish, and minerals dissolve into near-abstraction.

Sergey studied at the Kyiv School of Photography. His work has been exhibited in Paris, including NEW VOICES - Contemporary Photography Exhibition (13–16 Nov 2025) and the PX3 2025 Winners Exhibition (9–14 Nov 2025).