RODRIGO VALENZUELA
GENERAL SONG
September 6 – October 14, 2017
Preview reception September 6, 5:00 to 7:00pm
First Thursday opening September 7, 6:00 to 8:00pm (artist present)
THE WORK
General Song, Rodrigo Valenzuela's second solo exhibition at Upfor, reimagines images of the barricade in a new series of black and white photographs. Drawing on personal experience and history in his native Chile, as well as research about other countries such as Ukraine and Venezuela, the artist focuses on simple structures that people build in times of oppression as expressions of civil disobedience. General Song also draws on Valenzuela's longtime interest in poetic resistance, specifically Pablo Neruda's Canto General, an encyclopedic poetic history of the New World told from a Latin American perspective.
While Valenzuela's projects center on ideas of social justice and equity, his approach is always oblique and metaphorical, with equal attention given to formal concerns. Adapting a process developed for his 2015 exhibition at the Frye Art Museum, the artist staged barricades in his studio, then photographed and rephotographed the constructions. Negative reversal and small digital interventions further confound viewers’ perception of space and form.
Contact inquire@upforgallery.com for pricing and availability.
THE ARTIST
Recently appointed to the Department of Art faculty at UCLA, Rodrigo Valenzuela (b. 1982, Santiago, Chile) completed an art history degree at the University of Chile (2004), then worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States, completing an MFA at University of Washington in 2012. Valenzuela’s many residencies include a Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Skowhegan School, Maine; Bemis Center, Nebraska; and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York, among others. His work is in the collections of the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, New Paltz and Dimensional Fund Advisors, among others. Valenzuela was in Open Sessions 10 at The Drawing Center, New York and in the group exhibition Where Do We Stand? Two Years of Drawing with Open Sessions. More about this artist.
Valenzuela's film The Unwaged premiered at the Portland Art Museum on October 21, 2017 as part of Labor Standards. New Land, a solo exhibition of mixed photography and painting on canvas, exhibited at the McColl Center in Charlotte, NC from through December 2.
PRESS
Rodrigo Valenzuela: General Song at Upfor - Art Review
Feature: Rodrigo Valenzuela at Upfor - Visual Art Source