Watching and contemplating the landscape is inherent to the essence of a human being, Juana Subercaseaux argues. She looks at the natural landscape as one would watch a play unfold on a cosmic stage, being unable to tear her eyes from this sublime structure that we call “nature”. This is the heartbeat of her work; her muse and her drive. Yet, her paintings are not romantic or idealised but in fact based more on fear, survival, and the threat of death that comes from the unknown. Her work aims to establish a landscape as a possibility, an organic configuration that acts as a portal or threshold that is only completed through the subjective/subconscious gaze of the observer.

Responding to her own ambiguous landscapes set in Santiago de Chile, Subercaseaux evokes the relationship between the vast urban centre and the imposing presence of nature around it. Her life is set between the jagged Andes to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. She explains, “Santiago is surrounded by natural dangers. Chile is a land with the constant possibility of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, oceanic tsunamis, and flooded riversides from accelerated glacial melt.” This feeling of awe and unease is present in her haunting colours and soft watery lines; murmurs of shakes and waves augment her brush strokes leaving us with a suggestion of something further than the eye can see or wants to see. Her paintings conjure up sensitive omens and dynamic reticence in a world that is charged with movement and destruction.

Doble, 2020
Oil on canvas, 35 x 0.5 x 35 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Florero I, 2020
Oil on canvas, 40 x 0.5 x 30 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Isla, 2019
Oil on canvas, 100 x 2 x 80 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Leviatán, 2020
Oil on canvas, 100 x 3 x 160 cm
Courtesy of the artist

Agua del Pantano, 2020
Oil on canvas, 60 x 2 x 80 cm
Courtesy of Martin Subercaseaux Sommerhoff Collection

Humedal, 2020
Oil on wood, 25 x 0.05 x 35 cm
Courtesy of María Pia Mora Camus Collection