STRATA OF PILBARA - BERND NICOLAISEN

Photographs and Stratagrams
#BerndNicolaisen
#StrataOfPilbara

With Daniel Blochwitz and Adam Lowe
A film by Cédric Marville

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Photographs
My new project “Strata of Pilbara” is also about scientific studies and their artistic interpretations in the context of the relativity of our concept and understanding of time. This time, my photographs focus on the earth's crust and deal with the surfaces and structures of some of the oldest rock formations on our planet.
Light and shadow replace our precise sense of touch and enable rock structures to be experienced in photography. Combined with the illustration of found rock and mineral colors, a very precise picture of the materiality of the rocks is created.

Stratagrams
The works in the second series of works, the “Stratagrams”, continue to move towards the artistic interpretation of the geological traces found on site. They start where photography reaches its limits. They move away from the pure photographic image and should rather make visible what exists and takes place hidden in the depths of the earth, with all the possible colors, shapes, structures and processes.

The stratagram combines aspects of painting and photography. I am interested in the relationship of the elements to each other and how an image is created through the direct effect of adhesion and cohesion. The materials and chemicals used react very differently to one another. I can consciously control and subjectively influence their visual impact - however, in a process-related manner and therefore not as directly as in painting, and without objective intent. It differs from the chemogram, a type of camera-less dark chamber experiment, because it depends on the light sensitivity of the materials used. The stratagram is independent of light. The resulting filigree, very natural-looking forms and structures owe their shape to random processes and reactions.
This results in extreme, highly detailed densities and sharpness in a kind of "picture journey" which at first glance bears a resemblance to aerial photographs. The image is created using physical and chemical processes that are staged analogously on glass plates and then digitized. The Stratagram, the “chemical image”, consists among other things of water, oxides, methanol, copper, gold and silver pigments, local earths and powders from the drilling at the North Pole Dome in the Pilbara.
These natural elements create the actual spatial depth effect of the picture and a fascinating world outside of my experience. The subconscious pervades this picture when viewed, thus opening spaces for imagination and releasing our imagination.

Many thanks for this wonderull collaboration to Adam Lowe #FactumArte, Daniel Blochwitz, Martin van Krahnendonk @unsw Kathleen Cambell and Cédric Marville.



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Artwork © Bernd Nicolaisen 2022
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