Valley L447 / Video work, photographs and installation / 2016

Valley L447 borrows its name from a green industrial paint, that the manufacturer has labelled L447, Valley. The series of works addresses relations between humans and nature in the 21st century, particularly through the representation of nature as a commodity in contemporary consumption culture. The working process has been inspired by semiotics, global consumerism with its large-scale spread of cheap products, forest nature and haiku poetry along with its way of depicting the world.
Valley L447 is a place in which natural, unnatural and in between gets mixed. Nature seems to appear as a place that has been penetrated by Fremdkörper (foreign body) – while, on the other hand, the definitions of natural or foreign blur.
The work emits a calm feeling, but also aims to speak to the audience through a sensorial experience of alienation. Its emotional impetus lies at the aesthetic experience of nature as well as at the alarming observations of our contemporary reality. It is not a fantasy, but rather a reality rearranged aiming to form a new, self-coherent visual world. The soundscape of the video work is composed by musician Petri Alanko.

View a demo video of Valley L447 here