The starting point in my work is photography. This enigmatic, deeply fascinating, marvelous, both elusive and fixed registration of light, via the available technology of the time. With deep respect for the history of photography and art, but also the courage and willingness to both investigate and challenge its traditions and dogmas, it is crucial for me with my art to try to say something about and open up for reflection about being, individually and collectively.
I love contemporary photography. Ubiquitous. At times in a way that we are flooded by the rendering. From what has been seen, and seen again. So much so that I can ask myself what my first-hand observation is? What about my body? My senses? The mark of my hands by the material, the feeling of my skin for heat and cold. The importance of space for my experience of both presence and absence. These delicate balances between the rendered and the first-hand experience are some of the things that fascinate me most about the way photography influences our lives today.
I ask myself those questions. What exactly does the massively revisited mean to us? What do all the things we experience and orient ourselves to through second-hand experience, in photography, mean for the way we experience and are present in our lives? I try to open up the traditions and cultural histories both in photography and art history. I want art to deal with beauty, aesthetics, but that is not enough, it must also potentially change us, give rise to realization and insight. With the effects of visual language. The sensation of the eye. I paint on my photographs, I put the dried flower petals of summer in the photographs, and I photograph again. Mix and edit digitally, try to let the aesthetics work with what opens up questions and wonder, what am I looking at? Is it a painting? Is it a copy, an original? My work is continuous, and includes text, installation, sculptural work, various physical materials in the process, and my works all revolve around the attempts to open up to something recognizable, and potentially transformative in the viewer. A presence, a toned insistence on the infinity of the moment.
Nikolaj Callesen 2024
It is not to maintain something fundamentally elusive that we have art. Art can, for me, at its best help us relate poetically to the world. Let it open, in instant eternities. In the overlap and coupling of synthetic idioms, speak to us and activate sides in us that often cannot be expressed verbally, yet. That is a noble purpose of art. To be able to speak directly to us about what we do not yet have the words to express, but which lies latent in all of us.
Nikolaj Callesen – 2022
“…Because your image does not just say “Look at a beautiful landscape” or “Look at a majestic field” but something else either impossible to quantify or have the language to express. But somehow we must try. Storytelling is important. But it is also important to say to the viewer: “Stop speaking and only feel.” And you can say that through a poetical language full of enigma. All in the service of “the secret cord.” The thing that taps into the limitless, sublime unknowable….”
Lens Culture Submission Review, June 2021.
“..This is how your photography works, viscerally, not logically. So there is no reason for me to understand what I see in order to step into your world, but to feel. And I do feel. In addition, I feel that the pictures are the result of long hours of observation and experimentation with the means. If this is not art then what is art?..”
Lens Culture Submission Review, november 2021
Nikolaj Callesens tilgang til fotografiet er på én gang komplekst og så lige til, at det bevæger sig naturligt på fotografiets skrøbelige smalle kant.
Bogen ’Gensyn med sensommerens blodrøde, varme og vilde valmue’ af Nikolaj Callesen er et godt eksempel på det rå og det skrøbelige med kontrastfyldte sort/hvide fotografier sammensat med farvefotografier fra byens rum og naturens åbenbaringer.
Ordene i bogen sammenflettes med fortællinger i kameraets afbildninger: ”Bag mit lukkede vindue, er jeg i værelsets radiatorvarme åndenød. Suger febrilsk til mig af lyset, der når mig mellem hans sitrende spredte fingre imens de tegner klare fabelagtige skygger på asfalten bag ham”. Poetiske stemninger fra følelsernes afkroge.
Nikolaj Callesen besidder en sensitivitet i hans fotografiske arbejde, som er sjældent set og du som beskuer er inviteret ind i disse billedlige følelsesstrenge.
Henriette Lykke,
28. juli 2018.
“The eye sees more than the heart knows” – William Blake
Education:
Ba. Socialanthropology, Aarhus University, 2001
Fotografisk skole, Aarhus, 2001-2003
Ba. Hons. Fine Art Photography, Glasgow School of Art, 2006
Exhibitions:
Solo:
“Degreeshow” 2006, Glasgow
“I orkanens Øje” 2006, Bergen Kunsthall
“Efeu, Skvalderkål, Hjertensfryd og Månestråle”, Fountain House, Copenhagen 2017
“Og jeg glemmer at dagene er kortest i december” Fountain House, Copenhagen, January 2018
“Gensyn med sensommerens blodrøde, varme og vilde valmue”, Christianshavns Beboerhus, Copenhagen, August 2018
“Bearbejdede tegninger” Fountain House, Copenhagen, November 2018
“Bearbejdede tegninger”, Lundehuskirken, Copenhagen, March 2019
“Altered photographs”, Leica Boutique, Copenhagen, November 2019
“Ved Lyngbyvejens virkelige, vilde og klare åbne”, Kofoeds Skole, Copenhagen , February 2020
“Afskygninger – fotografiske variationer” – Fountain House København, august 2020
“Afskygninger – fotografiske variationer” – Lundehuskirken København, november 2020
“I mellemtiden” – Christianshavns beboerhus, June 2021
“Klang af ting i beton” – Galleri Underkant, May – july 2022.
“Fantastiske fænomener – 12 øjeblikke” – Københavns Højskoleforening, september 2022.
“Fantastiske fænomener – nye øjeblikke” – Lundehuskirken, maj-juni 2023.
”Langs poleret glas, gennem en lysning, – i et åbnet rum, ved byens kastanje” – Portnerboligen, Lyngby Kunstforening Oktober 2023.
“Tiden for det endnu ufortalte” – Christianshavns Beboerhus 2024.
Fantastiske fænomener – åbninger og øjeblikke” – Holbæk Hovedbibliotek 2024.
“Tingen i mig selv” -Projektrum Prospekt, Vesterbro – december 2024.
“Enigma – Sensation” – Galleri Flyvsk, Copenhagen 2025
Group:
Artotekets forårsudstilling, 2016, Copenhagen
Like Traces of Blackbirds in daylight: Copenhagen Photofestival, 2017
“Winter” Blank wall Gallery, Athens Greece november 2017
“The Sacred” Selection of work by Robert Adams, Light Box Gallery, Oregon, USA, august 2018
“Gruppeudstilling – abstrakt” – ´Galleri Øbro Jagtvej Bibliotek, April – juni 2019
“Portraiture” – Galleri Øbro jagtvej bibliotek, Juni-august 2019
“Black and white forest” – Il Buco, Copenhagen, september 2020
“Fugl 2022” – Johannes Larsen Museet, Kerteminde, Denmark.2022
“Salon 46” – Gruppeudstilling Rum 46, Aarhus, Denmark.May 2023.
“Byen i dig” – Galleri Prospekt, Vesterbro, August 2023.
“Skjult og afsløret – fotografiske fremkaldelser” – Duo with Claus Poulsen, Galleri Prospekt, Copenhagen, august 2025.
“Jord, himmel, lys – i verden med rødder i Grænselandet” – trio med Kristian Mainz, Helene Callesen, Udstillingsrummet Radar, Sønderborg, 2026
Publications:
“I Orkanens Øje”, Bergen Kunsthall, 2006
“Gensyn med sensommerens blodrøde, varme og vilde valmue”, July 2018
“In through deep green leaves” – March 2020
“Katalog” – Magazine for Danish/Nordic contemporary photography. June 2020.
“Afskygninger” – August 2020
“Ydre Østerbro” – January 2021
“DSLR” – february 2022
“Et år i Sibirien” – Limbo Library august 2022
“Emdrupveje” – Oktober 2023.
Støtte og bevillinger:
Danidas oplysningsbevilling: 2005
Statens kunstfond, rejselegat: 2007
Ophold på Klitgården, refugium, Skagen: 2007
Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond, November 2019, 2021
Billedhuggeren, professor Gottfred Eickhoff og hustrus, maleren Gerda Eickhoffs Fond, November 2019
Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond, November 2019, 2022
Københavns Kommunes råd for visuel kunst, December 2019
Konsul Georg Jorck og Hustru Emma Jorcks Fond, December 2019
15. juni Fonden – 2022
Amager Øst Lokaludvalg – 2022
Bispebjerg Lokaludvalg 2023
Nikolaj Callesen 