Euqinom Gallery announces its representation of Rodrigo Valenzuela with a solo exhibition New Works for a Post-worker’s World. Valenzuela is a Chilean artist based in Los Angeles, and was recently named a 2021 Guggenheim fellow. The exhibition will consist of the artist’s most recent photographic series, Afterwork, made from 26 installations created in his studio that allude, like most of his work, to the working class. New Works for a Post-worker’s World will be on view from September 1 – October 30, 2021.
In it, the artist turns to science fiction as a last refuge to imagine counter proposals to an economic system that only produces consumers. Photography, a medium always linked to the register of reality, this time addresses the task of creating worlds, generating an imaginary that exploits the worst of capitalism to combat it with the power of imagination. Says Valenzuela: “I imagine that years pass after companies and factories do not need the present worker. With a bit of pessimism, I imagine situations where the fetishization of machines has left the worker as a ghost in the global economy.
The works are titled Afterwork and the reference can be a simple question: What happens after work? What do we become? What is our role in society once we do not go to the hit , where we fraternize with different people that we do not choose, how do we execute a social and work empathy if we are only producing money for a page from home. “After-work is when we were supposed to have fun, have a drink and make the partner a friend and support against the oppression of the day. The works play with the idea of the factory full of spirits suffering the best of times.”
About Rodrigo Valenzuela
Rodrigo Valenzuela, Santiago, Chile 1982. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. where he is an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles School of Art and Architecture.
Valenzuela studied art history and photography at University of Chile (2004), holds a BA in Philosophy at The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA (2010) and an MFA at University of Washington, Seattle, WA (2012). Valenzuela is the recipient of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. He has received the Joan Mitchell Award, Art Matters Foundation Grant, and Artist Trust Innovators Award.
Recent solo exhibitions include: New Museum, NY (2019); Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR (2018); Orange County Museum, Santa Ana, CA (2018); Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2018); Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS (2016); Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2015). Public collections include: Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; and The Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA.
Rodrigo Valenzuela : New Works for a Post-worker’s World
September 1 – October 30, 2021
Opening Reception with artist: Saturday, September 4, 4 -7pm
Euqinom Gallery
1295 Alabama Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
