Bernd Nicolaisen, Restlicht, Museum Gletschergarten, Luzern, CH, 2016-2017

SUBJECTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY: ABSTRACTION BY REDUCTION
Light Paintings at the Museum Glacier Garden Lucerne


After the successful opening of the exhibition RESTLICHT by Swiss photographer Bernd Nicolaisen his work of glacial images should be considered until the beginning of next year at the glacier garden museum in Lucerne. The unique photographs of more than thousand-year-old ice were taken between 2004 and 2016 in Switzerland and Iceland. Among them current works, which are presented in public for the first time.

The newly installed exhibition gives attention to untouched, seemingly magical places of solitude, silence, melancholy and even spirituality. It depicts apparently abstract drawings of enclosed oxygen interplaying with black sediments of lava. The all-dominant and saturating color is blue – in all its variations and nuances. Ash, embedded in ice, is the master-liner; setting the frame for perpetual new combinations of color, light and shapes which challenge the observer to develop an individual, subjective perception. The photographs do not focus on the objective reality of a situation, but on the transparent effect generated by the authentic appeal of the tonality, contour and the graphical structure of ice.

Seemingly surreal images emerge and stimulate the beholder’s imagination, even invoking a mental connection to ice and winter scenery depicted in Dutch painting of the 16th century. Nicolaisen explores the structure and surface of frozen time, to visualize it in an expressive manner. There is nothing more suitable for the display of the time phenomena than glaciers: They are thousands of years old, yet their ice diminishes continuously, which reminds us of our own caducity and the transience of nature. “My works convey the lucidity of icy texture and the immenseness of clear ice. This is what creates my ice-tales,” as Nicolaisen noted.

The appeal of each shot is emphasized by the extreme lighting conditions, a form of light painting. To Nicolaisen it is important to find the perfect, barely remaining (residual) light for his images. The appearance of partially unreal lighting effects is due to the lighting situation on-site. Unlike the photographs of Swiss glaciers which appear two dimensional and milky against backlight, due to their earlier formation history and different embedded sediments, the images of the Icelandic glaciers attain a third dimension, distinguished by transparency and plasticity. The photographs originate from the Gorner Glacier and the Theodul Glacier in Switzerland and five glaciers in the south of Iceland, including the glacial lobe Breidamerkurjökull of Vatnajökull. Text: Andrea Henkens, Hamburg


RESIDUAL LIGHT, PERSPECTIVE, CLEAR-SIGHT.
Klaus Honnef, Bonn

»Only fantasy can conquer the limit of the horizon and only art lets us see what exceeds the potential of our eyes. Art is capable of conveying a feeling for the immensity of our being.

Photography appears to be the opposite of it all, as it brings the irretrievable past to mind. Then again it directly links the past with the present; by seemingly restricting the horizon it creates new space for the imagination. The photographic »Residual Light« project by Bernd Nicolaisen immerges deeply into the past of planet earth in order to discover the now. Residual light ist actually the light that remains of the day. In Nicolaisen’s images, it illuminates the history of earth before history was recorded. Glacial ice, which ceased to be eternal but is threatened with extinction, is history’s prime witness, its »genetic imprint in time« (Nicolaisen). Light transmits this history onto the light-sensitive cells of the camera – as it rushes on into a fathomless future.

The images by Bernd Nicolaisen foreshadow that past, present and future, are mental instruments of the human need for direction, which are furthermore historically determined. In view of the presumably incomprehensible laws of the universe, they provide limited epistemic value. They virtually melt in his pictures. Thus, the images appear endlessly clear and miraculously mystical, rationally cool and remarkably emotional, subjective and objective. History itself has always been and always will be a question of opportunity. Just like Nicolaisen’s photographs. They are so close and yet so far.

The very chimera arises, fine and full of atmosphere, as Alois Riegl named it »aura«. The images draw us magically into the deepest depth of our existence. The longer we observe, the more they provide us with a perspective onto the existential conditions of being. Opportunities which we can shape in many ways, but within a small time frame, when we take our time.« Klaus Honnef, Bonn

Nicolaisen predominantly works in analog photography with his 8x10 inch large-format camera, typically processing his shots to silver gelatin prints in black and white. Archival pigment prints and Transparency in color are digitally produced for the tableaux and lightboxes. Nicolaisen’s conceptual approach, his ever variegating motif of glaciers tracked over the years, transcribes the question of time and transience. An approach Nicolaisen already photographically examined 2004 to 2010 by means of the annual growth rings on California mountain pines. Now the ancient water, which has covered long distances and lasted hundreds of years in its frozen shape, is transferred to our present age and depicted in Lucerne. The observer sees details of glacial texture, ice caverns and tunnels, which hardly anyone has seen before. The sublime and pristine is found in the grandiose nature of arctic oceans, mountain ranges and glaciers. The latter increasingly disappearing in our time, the term “glacial retreat” confers an additional, extensive, ecological dimension to the works of Bernd Nicolaisen.


INFO

EXHIBITION
Glacier Garden Lucerne, Denkmalstraße 4, CH – 60006 Luzern.
Opening hours: Mo–Su 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. Duration: May 13, 2016 – Jan. 8, 2017

CATALOG
Bernd Nicolaisen – Restlicht
Photographs – Tableaux – Lightboxes - 2004-2015, Iceland

With texts by Prof. Klaus Honnef, Dr. Andrea Henkens, Andreas Staeger, Christoph Sigrist and Stephan Reisner, 2015.
Design: Walter Stähli
German / English. 192 Pages, 103 Images 245 x 295 cm hardback
Publisher: Hatje Cantz