
Sandra Kantanen has immersed herself in the world of landscape photography for the past two decades. Drawing inspiration from Chinese landscape painting and its unique perspective on nature, she creates idealized, surreal sceneries that can best be described as "mindscapes.” Upon discovering that many of the sacred mountains depicted in traditional Chinese paintings had been devastated by pollution and tourism, she embarked on an aesthetic journey to challenge the notion of what a culture believes to be ideal. Her photographs, characterized by soft, diffused light, capture landscapes marked by environmental change. Blending photography with digital techniques, Kantanen masterfully balances meticulously crafted chaos—interweaving colors, distortions, blurs, and brushstrokes. By stretching pixels to resemble dripping paint, she introduces brushstrokes that contrast with the underlying images, resulting in new, dreamlike sceneries. Rather than seeking out an existing place, she creates her own, transforming natural landscapes into idyllic, color-infused scenes where viewers can no longer distinguish between what is real and what is created by the artist.
Sandra Kantanen (*1974 in Helsinki, Finland) has exhibited at numerous institutions worldwide, such as the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), LACMA (Los Angeles), the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Museum of Photography in Seoul, KIASMA (Helsinki), HAM Helsinki, Houston Center for Photography, Denver Art Museum, and Kulturhuset (Stockholm). Her works are also part of multiple collections, including Kerava Art Museum (FI) and Fondazione Fotografia Modena (IT). She has published two monographs with Hatje Cantz, Berlin: Landscapes (2009) and More Landscapes (2019).