RODRIGO VALENZUELA – AFTERWORK
2022-10-03Rather than take the approach of photographic “ruin-porn”, where relics of an industrial golden age are depicted as elegantly shambolic, Valenzuela instead chooses to construct fictional environments, in order to imbue his images with the ferocity of his imagination, and crucially, his own physical efforts. Not satisfied with the existing romanticism of blight and resurrection, Valenzuela opts for image making that is defiantly labor intensive and ambitious in scope. Detritus and industrial parts are scavenged over time, taken apart or reassembled, and transformed in the artist’s own studio backdrops, then turned into flat images that confuse the viewer with scale shifts and multiple references. The artist calls forth his own identity as a worker, whether his experience working in construction or his process of art-making, often resulting in equally laborious installations in his exhibitions.
Opposite – Afterwork #1, 2021
Exhibition runs through to October 22nd, 2022
Asya Geisberg Gallery
537b West 23rd Street
New York
NY 10011