A Sense of Perspective

In this comprehensive showcase, works from some of the artist’s earliest series – Depth of Winter (2010), Toxic Beauty (2011), Side Effects (2011), and Over (2016) – are brought together with excerpts from his most recent contemplative projects, Arché (2021) and Event Horizon (2021).

Kacper Kowalski (b. 1977) initially worked as an architect, before dedicating himself to his true passions: flying and photography. For the past 25 years, the paraglider, small aircraft and gyrocopter pilot has been capturing bird’s-eye-views of the landscapes around Gdynia on Poland’s Baltic coast. In 2011, he was among the finalists for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award. 

Photographing from 150 metres above the ground, with only a small engine keeping him afloat, becomes an almost meditative experience: for Kowalski, the act of flying is not just a way to capture the world below, but a spiritual journey that reveals universal truths about the relationship between man and nature, as well as the present and the past.

The resulting images, recorded in both colour and black and white, offer up new interpretations of the world we live in, and present us with perspectives that are normally beyond our reach. Black tire tracks in white snow; birds flying over a dark-turquoise body of water; dense forests dusted with the first snow of the year: Kowalski’s mesmerising photographs are reminiscent of abstract paintings, drawing the viewer into a universe defined by contours, patterns and shapes.