A new environmental art object “Pedvale Kotem  no. 14” is being created at Pedvale Museum by Kardo Costa (Ricardo Kosta Mulè ) — an Argentinean born artist, who now lives and works in Switzerland.

Kardo Costa is a self-educated artist. Despite the fact that he doesn’t have the highest professional art education, his works are artistically powerful. He has had group shows and solo exhibitions in Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Paraguay, Switzerland, France, Spain and Germany.

The artist has chosen wood as a material that he uses to express his artistic ideas creating sculptures, woodcarvings, installations. Kardo Costa creates rustic, expressive carvings in wood that he then paints with local, contrasting colors. His works provoke associations with objects that were used as central elements in rituals by ancient tribes. Kardo Costa also works in other media – video and photography.

His new object for Pedvale Museum is a totem surrounded by a geometrically shaped pile of stones. The location of the artwork is always important for the artists, and it partly defines the ornaments and symbols that are carved in the wooden pole. Before coming to Pedvale Kardo Costa did a research in Latvian culture and traditions. Using the resources available in the Internet he found Latvian traditional songs, and decided to use the texts of the songs in the ornaments of his artwork.

As he uses wood in his works, Kardo Costa considers his duty to give back to the nature what he has taken for creating his art. Therefore a very important part of his project is planting new trees. Ten cypresses will be added to the composition of “Pedvale Kotem no. 14”. The artist will plant the new trees during the presentation of the artwork on the 31st May, when the opening of the new season “Stone. Time” will take place at Pedvale Museum.