LARISSA LOCKSHIN

Canada, 1992

Ǫuestions about time, memory, empathy and loneliness are the basis of Barbara Alegre (Spain, 1976)‘s work, one of her means to find answers are landscapes; looking for analogies between cinematography and everyday life through representations of spaces makes the work of Hugo Alonso’s (Spain, 1981) corroborate this portrait-landscape theory is repeated both in art history as well as on movie screens.

‘I use the nature that surrounds us to create works in which I can confront my inner conflicts,’ says Raffael Bader (Germany, 1987) when talking about his work. Vinna Begin (Indonesia, 1971) describes her landscape works as portraits of experiences. Juan Narowé’s (Brazil, 1993) compositions blur the line between subject and landscape, pushing the personification of the background to the limit. Lachlan Hinwood (United States, 1995) is not far from this concept and his locations are the result of a meditative practice on the transcendental relationship with the landscapes around us. Jon Koko’s (Sweden, 1988) dreamlike landscapes are not just mechanical representations, they are memories. The mountains and meadows of Guim Tió (Spain, 1987) are flashbacks of things that, in truth, never happened. The mind of Gabrielle Graessle (Switzerland, 1956) functions as a filter between what she sees, what she feels and what she ends up representing. This filtering effect is repeated in the work of Xevi Solà (Spain, 1969), whose reinterpretation is splashed with colors as is to be expected from a master of chromaticism.
That painting landscapes is not, in fact, just painting landscapes, is the reason why Rob Lyon (UK, 1982) has been painting the surroundings of the South Downs for almost a decade but no two works are ever carbon copies of each other.

The practice of John Joseph Mitchell (United States, 1989) elicits the emotional range of visual experience. James Morse (United States, 1982) uses earth imagery as a language to explore the emotions that arise when contemplating our existence.
Larissa Lockshin (Canada, 1992) consistently cultivates a spatial awareness in the viewer through materials and their relationship to the body, going a step further and sowing this doubt as to whether our landscapes have ever been objective in the viewer’s mind. Blanca Guerrero (Spain, 1990) directly accepts that all representation is recreation and tries to perpetuate what she felt when the sun touched her skin or how many layers of fog there were that day on that walk.
In the historical moment in which the landscape goes from being a ‘background’ to being the main element of works, we overlook the fact that nature’s famous ability to understand and reflect human existence was not something casual. Painting landscapes was painting portraits; painting landscapes was always an excuse.