Giacomo Costa

Born in Florence, Italy, Giacomo Costa has been creating imagined dystopian landscapes through manipulated photography for over two decades and exhibiting all over the world. Notably, he represented Italy at the prestigious Venice Biennale in 2009. He depicts towering city metropolises that eerily emerge from fog or peek through unchecked nature, reminiscent of Pripyat after Chernobyl or a scene from ‘Bladerunner’. Recently the subject of an article published by CNN, Costa’s “imagery strikes an unsettling tone, reminiscent of urban centers recently put under strict lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

In Costa’s “Aqua” and “Secret Garden” series’ he studied the natural environment gradually reclaiming the urban, man made landscape. Costa further investigates the relationship between man and nature in the series “Landscapes”, the artist explains that this series “represents the total defeat of nature which, having triumphed over man and having reclaimed it’s space, takes upon itself the indelible signs that the senseless behaviour of man left”. The exhibition “Landscape 2012” juxtaposes these two representations and views of possible future landscapes.

Giacomo Costa’s solo exhibitions include; ‘NO.W.HERE’, Sala Borsa, Bologna (2020); ‘Time Scape’, Palazzo del Parco, Diano Marina, Italy (2015); ‘Subjective and Surreal’, Fabrik der Kunste, Hamburg (2015); ‘Persitent Time’, Galerie Clairefontaine, Luxembourg (2015); Seoul International Photography Festival, Seoul, South Korea (2009); Foto Art Festival, Galleriea BWA, Bielsko-Biala, Poland (2009). Costa has represented Italy twice at the prestigious Venice Biennale and has been exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the XIII Quadriennale in Rome, VIII Biennale della Fotografia in Turin and across London, New Orleans, New York and Sydney.

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