Rodrigo Valenzuela

Arróniz presents Stature, a solo exhibition by Rodrgido Valenzuela.

Stature features photogravures made from constructions in the artist’s studio. The series exists between fiction and documentary tradition, between “everyday” materials and refined outcomes, between flattened photographs of ambiguous scale and three-dimensional references.

The forms in Stature might evoke Brutalist architecture, obsolete machinery, or Modernist monsters, but they are actually concrete and plaster casts of discarded consumer packaging.

Although monochromatic, the works introduce another palette of gray-sepia tones that lend them an old-fashioned gravity. The photogravure printing process, which predates photographic film, produces images that are more tactile than traditional photography and, when compared to digital images, are perceived almost as charcoal drawings.

The choice of polystyrene and concrete forms establishes a bridge between the disposable culture of advanced capitalism and the omnipresence of institutional structures that assert their authority through materiality. Having grown up in Pinochet’s Chile, Valenzuela has long been familiar with the imagery of protest and nationalist discourse. Through photogravures, the artist offers the following layers: a reevaluation of the black-and-white documentary tradition, an awareness of art history, and a fascination with architecture’s power to impose control.

—Arróniz