Born 1970 in Copenhagen.
Lives and works in Copenhagen.
Nicolai Howalt is a Danish artist, whose photographic work spans across documentary, conceptual and installation art, but with a prevalent interest in duality, connections and relationships as well as complex existential questions. In his investigation of these questions, Howalt uses a photographic process through which the concrete method often results in abstract answers. What is studied is both tangible and earthbound, but transcends through the questions that are raised.
In the series Old Tjikko, Howalt sets out to document what is believed to be the world’s oldest tree, Old Tjikko in Dalarna, Sweden. Afterwards, the single negative from his journey was exposed to more than 90 different types of analogue photo paper, which Howalt had collected, in order to explore the paper’s relation to both the photograph and time itself, making the series both a technical and philosophical study. Nicolai Howalt’s work is often characterized by the absence of a decisive moment, focusing instead on both the anticipation and the aftermath of a situation. Therefore, the works of Nicolai Howalt do not present answers, but open themselves up to more complex questions.
Nicolai Howalt is the recipient of honorary grants from a number of benefactors and institutions, such as The Hasselblad Foundation, The Danish Ministry of Culture, The Danish Arts Foundation and The Danish Arts Council. His work has been exhibited at a number of prominent institutions both in Denmark and abroad, most notably with solo exhibitions at ARoS – Aarhus Art Museum, Nikolaj Kunsthal, the Centre for Photography in Stockholm, among others, along with presentations of his work in galleries in China, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Korea, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Turkey and USA.
