Maria Jose Concha
María José Concha
The theme of María's work is linked to the representation of the Austral landscape; through expressive painting, she reveals the experience of landscape: The landscape is transmuted into painting.
She has had several individual exhibitions and has participated in collective art shows in Chile, Argentina, and the United States. She has been also part of AAF NYC in 2008 and 2009; the Red Dot Art Fair, London, 2008; and the Bridge Art Fair Miami, 2008.
Her career started with the exhibition “Umbrales 2006,” a selection of the most distinguished final projects of Universidad Católica de Chile’s Fine Arts Majors for the year 2005. Since then, she has participated in event such as: the double exhibition ”Land Shape,” with Patricia Claro (2007, Corporación Cultural de Las Condes, Santiago, Chile); the exhibition “Terra Nova” (2007, Decorazon Gallery, USA); “Exposición de la FAO” (2008, Santiago, Chile); “Exposición Sala de Arte Collahuasi,” with artist Alejandra Raffo (2010, Iquique, Chile); and in the charity program “Arte Ayuda”(2006-2010). She has also been distinguished in competitions, winning the Fondart Región de Aysén competition in 2007 and obtaining the category “honorable mention” in the first version of the contest “Teraike: Painting the Patagonia” (Chile, 2007), with her work “Paisaje Final.”
María 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 solitary Patagonic tree. With great refinement it becomes abstracted while it gets installed inside the landscape. 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, from catalog “Paisaje Final” Exhibition, 2008
The important fact of this artist's proposal is the methodological relationship with the painting material. 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 an 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 “Exposición Sala de Arte Collahuasi,” 2010
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