Quantum Oasis

Hveravellir is a geothermal area located in the heart of the Icelandic Central Highlands, along the route connecting the Langjökull glacier to the Hofsjökull. It is an extreme transition zone, suspended between two of the island's largest ice caps, where the volcanic terrain gives rise to hot springs, bubbling pools, and mineral deposits in continuous transformation. Here, geothermal activity is not an isolated element of the landscape but its supporting structure: the soil itself is unstable, alive, permeated by heat and pressure rising from the depths of the Earth's crust.

There are places in Iceland whose true aesthetic form only emerges when viewed from above. Hveravellir is one of them. To reach it, you travel along the F35, one of the most accessible off-road tracks in the interior, but still treacherous. The crossing takes place through a vast desert, almost devoid of landmarks, with isolated mountains and glaciers on the horizon that seem to float in space. Almost at the end of this crossing, you reach Hveravellir, a circumscribed area where geothermal energy concentrates and manifests directly.

There are many ways to photograph this place, but for me, it made sense to abandon traditional landscape interpretation. I chose to use a drone, taking advantage of favorable wind windows, to fly over the geothermal pools and focus exclusively on their shapes, colors, and stratifications. I maintained a low altitude, a few meters above the ground, waiting for the raking light to begin shaping the surfaces, revealing their volumes and micro-variations. When the wind began to move with more determination, sweeping away the water vapor and opening up the view, the structures emerged with sudden clarity. It was at that moment that the place revealed its deepest complexity.

The shapes and colors observed from above immediately brought to mind, for me, dynamics that belong to physics and the universe: energy fields, transforming nuclei, unstable systems in temporary equilibrium. The works Primal Pulse, Quantum Oasis, and Voltage do not aim to represent Hveravellir in a descriptive sense, but to visually translate a sensation of primordial energy, of matter in continuous becoming. Not a landscape to contemplate, but a process to observe in its manifestation.