The Museum of Nature series by the Finnish artist Ilkka Halso, who works in the field of photography and installation, shows us an image of nature that is anything but pure and uncontaminated, despite what people often think. What his works present is nature torn from its environment. The title of the series clearly refers to nature isolated from its context, nature that must be cultivated and even preserved, just like a work of art, inside a museum. The images confront the viewer with a reality that is completely new, unnatural and never seen before, a digital construct that Halso obtains by assembling photographs of landscapes and computer-generated 3D models.
The artist himself declares the environmental aims upon which his work is based. His striking constructions are intended to defend nature from pollution or rather to protect nature in general against human intervention. As he himself stated, “This project is born out of a pessimistic vision what is happening on the earth. I look to the future and I find no reason to be happy. I regard my works as a sort of visual pamphlet rather than images endowed with an aesthetic value.”
The artist’s works therefore offer a critical comment on the human need to dominate nature and the environment. Perhaps they really can be understood as a vision in which the artist shows us what awaits us in the immediate future if we go on treating nature as we do today. In this case, he tells us, we will only be able to enjoy the sight of a tree inside a museum.

Ilkka Halso (Finland, 1965)

A massive tree with a profusion of foliage and branches stands in the middle of a paved square with benches scattered around it. The scene is set in a closed room with a circular hole in the ceiling admitting a shaft of light, which falls on the tree just like an advertisement. The viewer does not experience the particular feeling of melancholy that often accompanies contemplation of a sublime natural phenomenon. Though inherently laden with symbolic significance, the tree stands in a constructed, unnatural environment. Is the photograph showing us an artificial environment, like the set of a science fiction film? Or is it a vision of a future when nature will have to be kept alive artificially through human intervention?