In her works, Pia Kousa (b.1977) especially considers the three-dimensional image and the relationship between photography, illusion and imitation. The starting point in her artistic work is the various inventions of media culture and the history of the living image, archaic technology and performance traditions. Most of the time, her works consist of photographs, which, placed on several levels as translucent layers, together create an impression towards three-dimensionality from the opening image.

“In the exhibition, I continue the theme of looking and perception, which interests me, while thinking about the concept of space. The landscapes and nature motifs appearing in the works of the exhibition are divided into collectively seen and experienced, loaded, kind of model landscape views, and into fragments connected to one’s own personal history, limited pieces of the environment. The closing of the world and the time of isolation forced us to stop at familiar things and look at views that we have seen many times already and pictures that are made of landscapes.

In the presented landscape views, there has been little change and there are hardly any traces of built culture from the last hundred years, time has just stopped. In this stagnation, there is also a concern about change, loss and the vulnerability of nature.

In the previous centuries, various viewing techniques and aids were connected to the romantic examination and presentation of the picturesque landscape. These inventions often combined science, research and entertainment, expanding the boundaries of viewing and presentation practices, scientific observations about the sense of sight and the functioning of the brain and, on the one hand, the utilization of an optical illusion based on entertaining visual perception. In the structural solutions of the works in the exhibition, the image’s ability to mirror and reproduce the landscape is considered, and at the same time, materials are extracted from the practices of presenting a pictorial landscape image.”

— Pia Kousa

The exhibition has been supported by the Art Promotion Center.

More Info:
kuvataiteilijamatrikkeli.fi/taiteilija/pia-kousa