Landscape on a Rice Grain
Solo exhibition, Forum Box, Helsinki. March 2nd to 25th, 2018.
I walk in a cellar guided by the light of a headlamp. The pitch-dark rooms are like angular caves. The chilly air feels humid, and the odor of mould is intense. The silence of concrete; the sound of water dripping in the distance. Images of landscapes glued onto the wall and flaking paint meld into a fascinating grotto scene. A socket sticks out of the wall like a strange burl. A kind of urban nature walk.
(Kaisu Koivisto’s work diary, spring 2017)
In Landscape on a Rice Grain Kaisu Koivisto explores the yearning for observing scenery and natural phenomena, and creating images of them. The exhibition consisted of photographs, sculpture and a video installation. The works of the extensive entity were connected by pictorial motifs such as forest, vegetation, clouds and ships in very contrasting contexts.
“My working method is combining things in a collage-like way. I juxtapose and connect materials, motifs and techniques of working.
Thematic photography is an essential part of my artistic practice. It is a powerful means in examining how traces of history, memory and the past are present in the here and now. They appear as receding and often contradictory remains in the changes of the world”, Koivisto tells about her artistic practice.
Kaisu Koivisto photographs in places which had their primes long ago: in locker rooms of factories and abandoned military bases in Eastern Europe. The political dimensions of the locations and sceneries remind one of their troubled past. Natural phenomena and the inevitably proceeding processes in nature are prominently visible in her lens-based works.