Nicolai Howalt

Nicolai Howalt's works are often characterized by the absence of a decisive moment. This is a deliberate artistic choice that allows Howalt to construct complex psychological narratives.

The defining feature of Howalt's recent copperplate printing project is that the central element of the works unfolds within an undefined space that lacks any reference to a timeframe.

By choosing experimentation as a starting point, Howalt's recent project, Herbarium - created in collaboration with Printer's Proof and the Natural History Museum - sought to push the technical boundaries of photogravure. It achieved this by using a method that combines the latest technological UV printing methods with traditional etching techniques.

Howalt's photogravures are a crystallized image of plant species that have invaded Danish flora over centuries. Interestingly, however, Howalt's artworks are not perceived as dried plant species mounted on paper. The use of metallic pigment allowed the sheets, selected from the archives of the Natural History Museum, to take on the status of fossils or traces of past geological eras. Each photogravure in Howalt's series Herbarium showcases the fragile condition of the photo-documented plant, while the transparency of the leaves makes them appear ghostlike. Even with highly meticulous scientific notation in the margins, these works seem detached from space, time, and place.