Maria Jose Concha

Contemplation II, Minimal abstract landscape painting, oil on linen

2014

MARIA JOSÉ CONCHA Born 16th February, 1979 Studied Fine Arts at Universidad Católica de Chile Maria Jose Concha lived for 7 years in the Chilean Patagonia, the world’s southernmost landscape, an experience, which transformed her work and becomes the focus of her expressive painting. Concha’s work takes those typical phenomena of the landscape and reconstructs, sometimes deconstructing them, into elements, which belong to the painting process. "The landscape is transmuted into painting, and the painting into the essence of the landscape." “Maria José Concha’s aesthetic notion of the landscape takes her to a formal purity. The relationship that she establishes with nature becomes translated into essential landscapes. The elements are arranged in a strong horizontal structure where, many times, the principal note is a solitaire Patagonic Tree. With great refinement it becomes abstracted… The reduction of the chromatic spectrum and the gesture and rhythm of the brushstroke show a mature formal conception and give an unusual expressive power to her work.” Beatriz Huidobro Hott, Chilean Curator, text from catalogue “Final Landscape” Exhibition writes: “The important point of this artist's proposal is the methodological relationship with the material painting. This painting is gestural and certainly informal but, because of the rigor that the artist gives to the painting through the gesture, it elaborates a visuality which, while decomposing the canonical representation of the landscape painting, gets closer towards a speculation, which shows a different manner and a different attitude in her gaze when she faces the natural model or the imagined nature”. Gaspar Galaz, Chilean Artist and Art Critic, extract from text “Collahuasi Art Exhibition Hall” ... "The canvases of Maria Jose Concha, meanwhile, provide views of nature under the uncertain light of dawn, dusk, abstracted, simplified into its most essential components" ... - Excerpt from the critique of the "Paene-Umbra / Almost-Shade" exhibition, "El Mercurio" Newspaper. Chile, Waldemar Sommer, Art Critic. María José Concha lives and works currently in Switzerland and is represented by the Decorazon Gallery.