Sandra Kantanen

Viewing Room

Saturday, 27 May 2023

Sandra Kantanen

Untitled (Refraction 1), 2022

Pigment print on archival paper

126.5 x 97 cm, edition of 5 + AP

Further options: 60 x 46.5 cm.

Sandra Kantanen has been delving into the world of landscape photography for two decades. Her fascination with creating idealized, surreal sceneries was born out of inspiration from Chinese landscape painting and a need to understand their way of looking at nature.

"During my stay in Asia, I learned that most of the sacred mountains they had depicted for thousands of years had been almost completely destroyed by pollution and tourism," says the artist. Hence, her interest in places marked by history or environmental disaster, and the need to discern what’s real and what’s not. However, her path is in a gray area that lies between an Eastern way of seeing and a Western sense of romanticism. Aesthetically, she questions what we, as a culture, consider ideal.

In her works, Kantanen uses her painterly sense; diffused light and her ability to manipulate digital images. In processing, she sometimes leaves photographs as they were taken or manipulates them, stretching the pixels so much that appear to be as fluid as paint. Kantanen's photographs can best be described in her own words as "mindscapes."