Fungi

  1. Solopshow
  2. 6. November 2025 to 10. January 2026
  3. Nicolai Howalt

The Danish artist photographer Nicolai Howalt practises what could be called a highlighting technique. Explorer of the incomprehensible, of facets of human life which escape us either due to their scale or their invisibility, the artist takes an experimental, serial approach to capture, to make visible, or to simply to expose the questions raised by his subject. Method and random meet: Nicolai Howalt’s positioning is humble and filled with doubt. He does not impose us anything, but rather shows us a world where humans stand small next to nature and a temporality beyond them. His work often comes with exchanges with scientists, materialised in texts published in his books. In a time when photography is everywhere, Nicolai Howalt explores and challenges its foundations.

With F.U.N.G.I., Nicolai Howalt explores the vital world of fungi and mycelia —a world often invisible to the naked eye but bearing as much importance to life on earth as oxygen or sunlight. In his works, fungi have a direct influence on the creative process. The artist creates organic photograms by cultivating a selection of fungal spores directly on photosensitive analogue paper, to then develop it in a darkroom. By deteriorating the paper, fungi bring about abstract, almost cosmic, patterns. Photographs of spores cultivated in Petri dishes unveil a multicoloured diversity of spherical growths, printed on both sides of glass so as to expose the view from the top and from the bottom of each dish. These works are presented at a right angle to the wall. In a third series, fungi cultivated in very thin layers and then dried have been used as negatives. Nicolai Howalt exposes them on photosensitive paper and develops them with analogue technique. By making fungi active participants in the creation of the images, the exhibition challenges the conventional idea of photography as a passive, stable capture of reality. There, photography is an active act of construction, stemming from the interaction between artist, pattern, and matter. As part of the exhibition, the photographic works come with a series of bronze sculptures where fungi grow and embed themselves in objects such as a canvas bag or stranded vines. F.U.N.G.I. places itself at the crossroads between science and art and raises issues of existential ecology and of phenomenology of time and of the image. This body of works aims at stimulating the imagination, at awakening consciousness and reflexions on the mysterious but vital presence of fungi in our life and our environment. F.U.N.G.I. questions our complex relationship to that nature with which we interact, whilst inviting us to question the physicality and history of photography.

He combines analogue techniques, biological processes and technologies with new media and materials. He thus creates works highlighting the unpredictability of matter, conversing with our shared reality, and studying the relationship between photography, time, and transformation. His practice often takes the shape of an exchange with the materials, which are not mere tools but act as co-creators of his works.

Nicolai Howalt graduated from Fatamorgana, a Danish school for fine-art photography in Copenhagen. His experimental series explore the boundaries of his medium. The exhibition is a collaboration with Martin Asbæk Gallery, Copenhagen, and Galerie Maria Lund, Paris.

A catalogue is available in German and English.

 

This exhibition is supported by: THE ART RESIDENCY