Nick Hase is from Ontario, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Studio Art at the University of Guelph. He currently resides in Banff, Alberta.
Nick is a lens-based artist. His work explores the manipulations of space and time in their relationship to natural environments- especially mountains.
Recent methodologies include both technical and experimental approaches. Sometimes involving the land and its results directly, other times intervening digital amalgamations of imagery.
There is an interest in subversion. Either in utilizing traditional landscapes in non-traditional ways, or through rendering found images into something reimagined. Nick’s work teases apart the fixed notion of what a photographic landscape can be and how exactly our perceptions can interject with it. Through both physical engagement with landscape and the photos we use to memorialize it.
Some of Nick’s work is personal in nature. He periodically sources found images from his grandfather’s hobby photographs, taken mostly in Europe. In his additions, Nick plays with the localization of time and spaces. There is a tension between past and present as he resurrects images, sometimes visiting them over and over again. At times the images make spaces look so un-real they almost appear futuristic, or imaginative. This can often be credited to the experimental and thus accidental nature of the renderings.
He is undoubtedly enacting nostalgia. Nostalgia is seductive yet also fabricated in that we can look at any older photographs and feel as though they are our own. There is a highlighted connection between the personal nature of nostalgia as well as it’s universality- both of which photography as a medium captures like no other. Nick has harnessed this quality.
The attention to atmosphere is an encompassing theme. There is no intention for political or social meaning beyond what is evoked through the general “mood” of Nick’s work. Instead, there is a dedication towards the landscape for landscape’s sake; the reflexive essence between viewers and things being viewed.
Minimalism plays a role, especially in presentation. Currently, Nick is exploring printing on aluminum panel for the simplicity of its display. As well as using graphite against tree bark as a pure approach to record the textures simply as they are- so that the translation of sharing-the-trees with viewers comes with ease.
Not limited to photography; Nick’s work investigates drawing, cyanotype, light, reproduction, abstraction, and plenty of other unconventional artistic facets.
When he’s not photographing or editing, Nick spends his time skiing and instructing. His ski photography emerged as a combination of these two loves and supplements much of his other works. Locals may be familiar with his pseudonym Hase on the Hill.
After working at the Avens Gallery in Canmore in 2021, Nick has established a first-hand understanding of local and Canadian-renowned art, as well as the artistic community present. He is now emerging into a dedication towards his own practice and is open to fulfilling commissions for people interested in his work.
