PRESS RELEASE
PRIMARY is proud to present Queruza, a solo exhibition by Buenos Aires–based painter Jimena Losada Lacerna, marking the artist's debut solo exhibition in the United States. Rooted in a deeply embodied connection to place, Losada Lacerna's paintings are not depictions of landscapes so much as atmospheres—crafted from memory, intuition, and observation. Her works emerge slowly, like something overheard or glimpsed in passing: quiet, exacting, and charged with presence. Opening April 26, 2025, the exhibition will remain on view through May 24, 2025.
Losada Lacerna refers to herself as a landscapist, not because she paints topographies, but because she enters into them. She begins with immersion—feeling out the gestures, temperatures, and unspoken codes of a place. What results is a kind of visual grammar: paintings composed of dislocated yet resonant elements, rendered in muted palettes of quaternary tones, each scene suspended in a slow, adrift temporality. Figures appear solemn, isolated. Objects float in a hush. Time stills, but narrative simmers beneath the surface.
The exhibition's title, Queruza, comes from Argentine lunfardo—a colloquialism meaning to act in secret, to observe without being seen. It speaks to the artist's process: watchful, patient, attuned to what usually goes unnoticed. There is a sense of discretion in these works, a refusal to overstate. Instead, Losada Lacerna trusts that mood, gesture, and color can hold what language cannot. Her paintings do not illustrate—they insinuate. They lean into silence as form, and presence as material.
Each work operates as both image and action. While the surface may appear still, the spaces they depict are not inert. There is movement—through light, through breath, through implied gesture. Her subjects (or more precisely, the carriers of her atmosphere) are not symbols. They are tools—selected not for what they represent, but for what they can hold, for the charge they bring into the scene. These are not surrealist compositions. They are rooted in lived experience, altered not for effect, but through the filters of perception, memory, and slowness.
In a moment marked by velocity, pressure, and performative clarity, Queruza offers something else: a slowing down, a looking sideways, a return to what can only be known by being quietly present. In Losada Lacerna’s work, landscape is not a view—it is an encounter.
Opens April 26, 2025 at 5 PM
On view until May 24, 2025
Jimena Losada Lacerna (b. 1990, Mendoza, Argentina) completed a Bachelor's Degree in Visual Arts at the Faculty of Art of UNCuyo, later moving to Rosario, and currently lives and works in Buenos Aires. In addition to developing her work in Mendoza, Rosario, and Buenos Aires, Jimena Losada has held solo exhibitions in institutions and galleries in these three cities. These include De espalda a la Luna (2019) at the annex of the Municipal Museum of Modern Art of Mendoza; Rincón Vago (2021) at Jamaica Gallery in Rosario; and Fangal (2023) curated by Claudia del Río at PASTO Gallery.
Primary (Est. 2007) is a context and research-driven curatorial collective with an emphasis on public art. We thrive amongst the self-taught, working-class misfits, who explore the margins of a new Americana through pungent, human-focused narratives. Our program engages with the raw and uncanny, celebrating border voices, bootleg culture, and intergenerational commentary, connecting the new and unseen with broader audiences and evolving collections.
For further information, please contact info@thisisprimary.com
