Biography
Born in Denmark in 1970.
Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Through photography, Nicolai Howalt explores time, light, the concepts of life and becoming, materiality and immateriality. His approaches are alternately documentary, experimental and conceptual. His most recent explorations, developed according to a set of rules, have led him to capture the vital and destructive rays of the sun in Light Break (2015). In Endings (2011) he deals with life turned to dust again through pictures of human ashes. Elements (2016) showcased the transformative properties of primary elements of the periodic table (gold, silver, copper and iron) – by media of a photosensitive emulsion the artist transferred them on to sheets of different metals. The series Silver migrations (2018) is the materialization through images of the process by which expired photo paper (1962) alters. In other words, it describes the chemical evolutions caused by time and humidity. Here shades of soft and glowing greys and strong whites lead us into a world reminiscent of micro-organisms, of shapes on the verge of an inevitable subsequent migration. Only the act of developing the photosensitive sheet photo paper, the artist’s sole intervention, has halted the evolution. With this last series, Nicolai Howalt questions the role of the photographer in the context of digital era, by turning himself into mere revealer of images.
Exhibitions
Specimens
Nicolai Howalt
12.05 > 02.07.2022
With Specimens, Nicolai Howalt shares the visions and discoveries that his own curiosity allows him to access. The passage of time is materialised, the systems and structures of nature are made manifest, including in terms of their exceptions. The similarities and potentials carried by the micro and macro-worlds are the basis for ever-renewed wonder at the fragility of being.
Migrations
Nicolai Howalt
Esben Klemann
Pipaluk Lake
16.11. 2019 – 11.01.2020
The exhibition Migrations brings together three artists, the photographer Nicolai Howalt, the visual artist Esben Klemann and the sculptor Pipaluk Lake – who exploit, each in their own way, the migration of matters.
Migrations thus shows how a world invisible to the eye, regulated by its own rules, causes movements, whether spontaneous or born from the impact of voluntary interventions… Through the scope of the artworks, the very concrete field of the materials reveals the fundamental processes that are inherent to our existences.
de travers (sideways)
Nicolai Howalt
Esben Klemann
7.11.2017 – 6.01.2018
Nicolai Howalt practices a concrete abstraction, an enlarged reality that most often starts with elements of nature to seize less visible dimensions of our existence. Esben Klemann questions matters and forms in a fun and innovative approach – going against established concepts. With de travers (sideways), the two artists have entered a dialog by taking possession of the gallery space in an unusual way. Nicolai Howalt and Esben Klemann wanted to make their respective fascinations dialog together, while challenging each other, by turning the common artistic practices upside down.
Off site
Nicolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen
Variations of Old Tjikko
Nicolai Howalt
28. 08. 2020 – 24. 01. 2021
A single negative has become a total number of 96 variations created on approximately 96 different types of aged analogue light-sensitive photo papers.
“They are revealing a different kind of temporality, which we had forgotten we still inhabit. They remind us of a distant past that we are still stuck in. Like a powerful zoom disregarding any corresponding distancing, leaving us dizzy as we are simultaneously drawn away from and brought closer to what we can see.” Lars Kiel Bertelsen, Extract from the presentation of the book Old Tjikko
Photo: David Stjernholm
Press
La peinture métaphysique de Peter Martensen
L'Oeil
Septembre 2017
N° 704
Fabien Simode
Peter Martensen "ravage " l'entendement
Libre Belgique - Arts Libre
23 Août 2017
Semaine du 23 au 29 Août 2017
Roger-Pierre Turine
Vous avez dit "Complot" ?
Dossier
Le Monde diplomatique
Juin 2015
N°735
Dossier illustré par Peter Martensen
Publications and texts
Nicolai Howalt, By looking down I see up. By looking up I see down
Fabrik Books, 2017
Capturing invisible rays of light, ashes from human cremation, and the volatile reactions of primary elements on metal plates, melding aesthetic interests with those of natural science, this book offers readers a rare insight into the artist’s most recent explorations of exposure, fragility and change.
See the sun
a poem by Morten Søndergaard
Published in Light Break – Photography/Light Therapy – Nicolai Howalt, Fabrik Books, Copenhagen, 2015
Nicolai Howalt, Light Break
Fabrik Books, 2015
Coffee table format artist’s book unfolds Danish visual artist Nicolai Howalt’s exploration of scientist and physician Niels R. Finsen’s original light-therapeutic methods, in spectacular full colour direct photography of invisible light.
Howalt’s fascination of Finsen’s experiments and apparatus is based on the obvious similarities between the basic elements of photography and Finsen’s medical phototherapy. In both cases, light rays are passed through specially crafted lenses and filters onto photosensitive material.
Finsen discovered that invisible light rays, at the periphery of the electromagnetic spectrum, had the property to heal. It is these same rays Howalt is interested in, now taking advantage of the sunlight’s ability to blacken photographic emulsion.
Towards the Light: Histories of Photography and Phototherapy [excerpt]
Tania Woloshyn
Published in Light Break – Photography/Light Therapy – Nicolai Howalt, Fabrik Books, Copenhague, 2015
Nicolai Howalt, Old Tjikko
Fabrik Books, 2019
The tree, Old Tjikko, stands in a deserted landscape on a mountainside at a height of 1,000 meters in Dalarna, Sweden, and with its impressive age of 9,500 years is considered to be the oldest tree in the world. Visual artist Nicolai Howalt has photographed this exceptional spruce, in itself about 5 meters tall. A single negative has become the many different photographs in this book: a total number of 96 variations created on approximately 96 different types of aged analogue light-sensitive photo papers, many of which are long past their expiration date. The result is an almost organic diversity of perception and expression; an aesthetic where the premise of each individual photograph, on par with the original motif itself, has become an integral part of the image-creating process.
9 questions to Nicolai Howalt
video, April 2020