'Scanning Landscape'
art project by Bekim Hasaj, 2021 - 2023
The inspiration for this project comes as a result of my long observations and trips made alongside the western part of Ostrobothnia, of the houses, towns, communities, and the territory that hosts them. An urgency to know and then represent this intimate relationship with the surrounding in a visual abstraction and yet original and personal way.
I was particularly interested in the mutual relationship of the community with this environment, from an artistic point of view under an 'anthropological' lens.
Choosing historical and contemporary sites along with natural ones, I would examine random images, places, forests, people, signs, and traces, between past and present.
This project is also an attempt to look into the 'landscape genre' with renewed interest and artistic approach. But, what is a conventional 'landscape genre' in Art?
It refers to a specific style of doing art by creating visual representations of the surrounding environments (landscapes), basically, nature-dominated but also urban/city scenarios. The technique and style can differ, and such is also the medium or the perspective of the singular artist. The subject is in itself the 'landscape', which is generally seen as detached from the artist's eye.
From here, I take and start my personal-visual analysis and interpretation. A personal reflection on the ways of representing this main art subject, and secondarily, this particular landscape which I´ve been experiencing for the past 6 years. In an allegorical expression scanning my subject from no-distance, almost attached to its surfaces, its patterns, its colors, shapes, cavities, traces, feelings, stories... an eternal time.
Reconsidering to represent the Landscape out of its conventional-historical frames, although through a personal and arbitrary perspective in the present. In the final stage of this project, I´d like to represent these visual samples created by me, or by those picked up from a natural state and unaltered, into an organized form, giving the public a final aesthetic view of all elements of this ´puzzle´.
In the canvas paintings I use my artistic practice, which consists of the visual play of two or more images superimposed but, in this case, applied to the central subject of the landscape.
This project includes paintings, frottage prints, water-transfer prints, photography collage, sculpture and materic art.
(Part of) The art project is funded by Svenska Kulturfonden.
The series of metal sheets entitled 'shells' represent the landscape through its textures, traces, and stories. Shaped by hammering the metal on top of a natural body, the 'shell' is what remains after a close-up encounter.
The sculptural series is Hasaj's most recent production for the Scanning Landscape project, and still in progress. Sheets of different recycled and non-recycled metals (brass, copper, steel) have been modelled on the rocks embedded into the taiga of Ostrobotnia, a legacy of the Ice Age.
’Exploring, crossing, entering the land and its elements; an encounter and exchange in the microcosm. A re-discovery that re-perceives what we think is familiar and evident, through abstractions and the decontextualization of the natural landscape and its patterns. Discovering and revealing connections beneath the apparent nothingness, feeling them as new dermis in our bodies.’
Series of Scanning Landscape Project by Bekim Hasaj, 2021-2023 / Manual photo transfer onto canvas, irregular dimensions. 'Dripping Cavities' exhibition at Vaasa City Art Gallery in Vaasa (Finland, November 2023-January 2024).
Multidisciplinary project by Bekim Hasaj, 2021-present. Photo transfer on canvas process for the 'Reverse, revealing, reconstructing image' series in the home-studio in Malax, Ostrobothnia (Finland), 2023.
Multidisciplinary projecy by Bekim Hasaj, 2021. At work on frottage in Bergö, Ostrobothnia (Finland).
Series of Scanning Landscape Project by Bekim Hasaj, 2021-2023 / Manual photo transfer onto canvas, irregular dimensions. 'Dripping Cavities' exhibition at Vaasa City Art Gallery in Vaasa (Finland, November 2023-January 2024).
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