Using the personal experience and autobiographical themes, Rodrigo Valenzuela constructs narratives that indicate the tension between the individual and social communities. With gestures of detachment and displacement as the marks of the both aesthetic and subject of his work, the artist explores the way an image is inhabited, questioning the method of translation the objects and people into the spaces of artwork. Aiming to place an expressive but intimate contact between the realms of subjective and political occurrence, the artist creates the photographs and videos that are familiar and distant at the same time.
Valenzuela was born in Santiago in 1982, where he earned his art history degree. When he moved to the United States, besides making art, he worked in a construction in order to support his passion for creative expression. After he finished his MFA at the University of Washington, he became a Core Fellow at Museum of Fine Arts in Huston. His work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Frye Art Museum, Seattle, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago and Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston and been held in several public and private collections. Valenzuela is a recipient of Artist Trust’s Arts Innovator Award (2014), the Texas Contemporary Award (2104) and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts grant (2013).
His large-scale installation Hedonic Reversal with three-channel video projection El Sisifo, make the wider context and move beyond his previous autobiographical projects, questioning the issues of class, race, and labor. Coming from the family of workers and being a worker himself, he strives to represent a larger statement about everyday life. The other installation, the Future Ruins, emerged as the response to the recent transformation of Seattle where the former modest apartments, cottages, and unpretentious buildings are being replaced by elite estates of the technological nouveau riches. The focus of his discussion is directed at those who construct and maintain those places, the workers whom he names the 13th Man, who often under the cover of darkness removes the trash left behind by the 12th Man.
Seeing too many monuments erected to the wrong people makes him wonder why and how we honor people in the public sphere and encouraged him to create a project as a reaction to the lack of heroic figures in contemporary culture. Criticizing the idealization of fame and fortune, the artist questions the values of the neoliberal society that neglect the sacrifice of the unknown person in everyday life. Sin Heroes is deprived of the human figure in favor of geometric design in a form that resembles the altars. Engaging the viewer in questions concerning the ways in which the formation and experience of each work are situated—how they exist in and out of place, Valenzuela makes a social context that attracts increasing national attention.
The Artist is represented by the Lisabird Contemporary, Vienna.
Featured image: Rodrigo Valenzuela – Prole (detail), 2015
All images courtesy of the artist
Year | Exhibition title | Gallery/Museum | Solo/Group |
---|---|---|---|
2016 | Rodrigo Valenzuela | Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita | Solo |
2016 | Rodrigo Valenzuela | Fogelman Gallery of Contemporary Art, University of Memphis, TN | Solo |
2016 | Sin Héroes | Klowden-Mann Gallery, Los Angeles, CA | Solo |
2016 | Sin Héroes | David Shelton Gallery, Houston, TX | Solo |
2016 | Hedonic Reversal | Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA | Solo |
2016 | Hedonic Reversal | envoy enterprises, New York NY | Solo |
2016 | NW Art Now @ TAM 2016 | Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma | Group |
2016 | 2016 Core Exhibition | The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX | Group |
2016 | (Not So) Still Life | Wave Hill, New York, NY | Group |
2016 | transmissions | The Franklin, Chicago, IL | Group |
2016 | Time + Space: Beginnings | Bemis Center, Omaha, NE | Group |
2015 | Rodrigo Valenzuela | The Factory, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2015 | Residuous | Museo de Arte Contemporàneo, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile | Solo |
2015 | Prole | CUAC, Salt Lake City, UT | Solo |
2015 | Hedonic Reversal | Upfor, Portland OR | Solo |
2015 | Future Ruins | Frye Art Museum, Seattle ,WA | Solo |
2015 | Conceal Market | ROY G BIV Gallery, Columbus, OH | Solo |
2015 | UNTITLED Art Fair | Miami, FL | Solo |
2015 | Texas Contemporary Art Fair | Houston, TX | Solo |
2015 | A World in Flux: 2015 Biennial Exhibition | New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH | Group |
2015 | My Kingdom for a Stage | Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC | Group |
2015 | Made in Woodstock VII | Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY | Group |
2015 | Prole | Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA | Group |
2015 | This Side of Paradise | FotoFest, Houston, TX | Group |
2015 | Tele-novela | Acre TV | Group |
2015 | De coy | Worksound International, Portland, OR | Group |
2015 | Neddy Artist Awards | Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle, WA | Group |
2015 | West of the Sun | Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA | Group |
2015 | Country | Home, CUE Foundation (curated by Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell), New York, NY | Group |
2015 | Source Amnesia | Klowden Mann Gallery, Los Angeles, CA | Group |
2015 | The Great Debate About Art | Upfor, Portland, OR | Group |
2015 | The Great Debate About Art | envoy enterprises, New York, NY | Group |
2015 | Fellowship: New Works | Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA | Group |
2015 | Bellingham National 2015 | Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA | Group |
2015 | Everything Your Heart Desires | Soil Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2015 | Wheaton College Photography Biennial | Norton, MA | Group |
2015 | Maria TV | Diverse Works, Houston, TX | Group |
2014 | Help Wanted | Archer Gallery, Vancouver, WA | Solo |
2014 | Goal Keeper | Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2014 | Open Seas | Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA | Group |
2014 | VOX X: Present Tense | Vox Populi, Philadelphia PA | Group |
2014 | This Might Not Be for Now | Cabinet, Brooklyn, NY | Group |
2014 | Made in America | National Academy Museum, New York City, NY | Group |
2014 | The Measure of All Things | Room Gallery, University of California, Irvine, CA | Group |
2014 | IDxID: New Identities | Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, WA | Group |
2014 | 9th Annual Next Dance Cinema | Velocity Dance Center, Seattle, WA | Group |
2013 | (in) habit | Blindfold Gallery, Seattle WA | Solo |
2013 | Strangers in a Strange Land: The Coyote Project with Anastasia Hill | University of California | Solo |
2013 | Self, in collaboration with Anthony Sonnenberg | 4Culture Gallery, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2013 | SIGHTLINES | Gage Academy, Seattle, WA | Group |
2013 | Exile | El Rincon Social, Houston, TX | Group |
2013 | CURRENTS 2013: International New Media Festival | El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe, NM | Group |
2013 | En Foco’s New Works | Longwood Art Gallery, Bronx, NY | Group |
2013 | Unknown | Larson Gallery, Yakima, WA | Group |
2013 | Green Gothic | Hedreen Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2013 | LENS 2013 International | Perspective Gallery, Chicago, IL | Group |
2013 | Untitled | The Majestic Theater, Corvallis, OR | Group |
2013 | Optic Nerve 14 | BIG Screen Plaza, NYC, NY | Group |
2012 | Up against | Joe Bar, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2012 | MFA Thesis Exhibition | Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2012 | Arrest Me | Punch Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2012 | Shadows | Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR | Group |
2012 | Optic Nerve 14 | MOCA, Miami, FL | Group |
2012 | New Boondocks | CoCA, Seattle, WA | Group |
2012 | Digital Connections | Seattle Art Museum Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2012 | ONN-OF | The Sweater Factory, Seattle, WA | Group |
2011 | Fixing the Architecture | Bryan Ohno Gallery, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2011 | MittWit | Vignettes, Seattle, WA | Solo |
2011 | Work in Progress,, in collaboration with Sutton Beres Culler | Cornish Art Gallery, Seattle, WA | Group |
2005 | Play #2 | Juan Egenau Gallery, Santiago, Chile | Solo |