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Nicolai Howalt  Copenhagen, Denmark


* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.


About Nicolai


Car Crash Studies, a thought provoking photographic study of cars that have been involved in severe and potentially fatal accidents. The series moves between documentation and abstraction. While the car crash studies are typographical in nature, seeming in some instances to be closer to sterile accident report photographs, the subject matter most obviously begs the viewer to confront the human fear of trauma and death.

Several of the images are vividly abstract and look more like landscapes than slashed up metal. Collided bodyworks, dents and cracks in varnish appear as highly enlarged details in the monumental works. These ‘color plains’ become the ultimate instance of beauty created from suffering, pain and destruction.

Although Car Crash Studies is specifically based on cars that have been involved in accidents, Howalt’s works rather attempt to portray an abstract, mental state, namely the duality we feel in relation to accidents or catastrophes when experienced from a distance – as spectators. The exhibition at Bruce Silverstein Gallery thus approaches classical themes, but in contemporary interpretation.


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Nicolai appears in the following Top 10 lists


'2010'


10 of 13 reactions displayed


"Your pictures make me feel soiled, dirty- Which is not necessarily bad but with all the "fluids", blood, breast milk and such as well as the unclean interiors of some of the photos..they make me want to wash or put anti-bacterial gel on."

"Weirdly affecting. What a strange place to find abstract visual beauty. Call me morbid but I like to see what Nicholai Howalt would make out of the eco-horror in the Gulf of Mexico. Here's atitle for you, Nicolai : call it "EcoCaust" because that's what it is. If you're looking for stark, ironic contrasts, I'd bet you'd find a few million down there. I think you're work is great..."

"I haven't yet been to the artists site, but I want to comment on the first impact when I saw the upper photo on this page, on my Google page. Probably very obvious but the first made me think of a stylized skull.. and then perhaps an overhead shot of a glacier/polar scene.On this page I see, in the lower image, a pair of ballerina slippers bashing in a faceless head. the chin and neck in the lower middle to right part of the image.-laugh if you like, doesn't matter."

"The two photographs are startling and disturbing. They portray the result of disrespecting things and ourselves. Terrifying, in a way."

"The abstracts are great! n+t is especially intimate. Great work."

"Where's the blood?"

"Hi there,I have not seen this kind of art work before but I do know something of the complexities of taking photographs to suit the light an mood of the textures you are trying to capture.I am trying to create mood, with my water colour flower paintings, and although I am a late starter, with art,(now 65) I am, after six years of trying, just about finding my own style.Having said that, it took me a long time to pluck up the courage to show my work on the blog site.I am afraid I am over critical of my own work. Good luck with your work and I hope you get lots of good comments.John."

"Interesting premise for a photography project but the pictures don't keep my attention very long. It could be artistaday's fault, they've been on a roll presenting us with unique and unusual art and the bar is raised."

"I love it it's really different!! I like different"

"Bravo! I think the stories I've seen on your website will have my wheels turning all day. The 3x1 series reminds me of the intense intimacy of visits with my eastern European relatives. Congratulations!"


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