Bernd Nicolaisen - Arco Event in Factum Arte, 2023
Bernd Nicolaisen - Arco Event in Factum Arte, 2023
Since 2018 I have been working with the Factum Arte team to give my work a new materiality through creative print resolutions. The solutions have included giving surface and form to the frozen water of Iceland’s glaciers (#Restlicht, Hatje Cantz Verlag), visualising meteors in deep space (#Headof67P and #ChuryoutofHorizon), re-presenting the layering of rocks that are over two billion years old (Strata of Pilbara) and now introducing a new body of poetic transformations of a living Bristlecone pine that is over 4500 years old. A series 8 x10 inch black and white negatives taken in a remote area of Sierra Nevada using a plate camera have been transformed in ways that celebrate the fossil-like qualities of the living wood in which presence and absence co-exist.
„The black markings that criss-cross the ancient wood of the pine trees are proof that time and probability are relative terms: every tree here has been struck by lightning at least once in its lifetime. In terms of human lifetimes or even photographic exposure times, this is almost unimaginable.“ Daniel Blochwitz
More than ten years have passed since the trees were captured on film. At Factum Arte, this negatives were printed in layers onto gesso panels or transformed into depth maps that were CNC-milled into alabaster, giving depth and surface to the time-worn material that has been resisting the forces of nature. The inverted tonal values of the prints now suffuse each piece with an inner light, enhancing their patterns from within.
With Adam Lowe, Factum Arte
A film by Film: Cédric Marville
Many thanks for this wonderul collaboration to Factum Arte