Nicklas Johannes is Making New Surfaces

I’ve been lucky to see Nicklas Johannes quite regularly over the past couple of years, and I wish I could see his current show, A Trolley Handlers Journal, in person at HAGD Contemporary in Aalborg, Denmark. In this new series, the Danish artist made things more complex, more varied, and, as a result, less straightforward, less representational, and more open to interpretation.

I first saw Johannes's work at CAN Ibiza in 2025. Presented by HAGD, his abstracted images of crowded gig/party scenes and their pumping atmosphere fit the island, and I loved how he conveyed that with spray, airbrush, and oil on jute. But I wasn’t aware that being on the island jump-started this body of work. “Last year, when I exhibited at CAN Ibiza, I bought a big drawing book from a local art supply store, which I now have filled with 103 drawings,” Johannes told me about the timeline of these works, adding that “the current show is the first group of paintings that comes from the drawing book.” This is what the show title A Trolley Handlers Journal means (the artist has been a trolley handler for some years now).

I remember seeing the first steps into this new body of work at HAGD’s booth last year and being absolutely mesmerized by rich, carpet-like surfaces. As if each tiny lump were injected with a syringe, these intricate surfaces are built by pressing paint mixed with wall filler through jute weave. In fact, about 90% of the image is painted on the back, and these sections contrast with flatter, sprayed passages, together forming fake, cut-out, collage-like compositions. Besides providing a way to pay tribute to Jean Dubuffet's Théâtres de Mémoire series, “a new way of approaching the canvas makes it possible to make several paintings in one painting, which suits the way my brain works extremely well,” Johannes admits. Finally, the key part of this new approach is the moment of translating the drawing from the book onto the canvas. Not interested in making a perfect copy, Johannes is continuously intrigued by how things will end up looking. “Space between the translations is, to me and my head, very exciting,” Johannes says. —Saša Bogojev