Rodrigo Valenzuela
Afterwork #26, 2020/2021

Gelatin silver print, 20 x 24 inches
Edition 1/3, signed, verso
Framed
Courtesy of the artist and EUQINOM Gallery
Estimated value: $2,800

Valenzuela's most recent photographic series, "Afterwork," are installations created in his studio that allude, like most of his work, to the working class. 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."

About the Artist:
Rodrigo Valenzuela

Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.1982, Santiago, Chile) lives and works in Los Angeles, where he is an assistant professor and head of the Photography Department at UCLA. Valenzuela is the recipient of the 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography and Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. He has received the Joan Mitchell Award, an Art Matters Foundation grant, and the Artist Trust Innovators Award. Recent solo exhibitions include New Museum, New York (2019); Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR (2018); Orange County Museum, CA (2018); Portland Art Museum, OR (2018); and Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2015). Recent residencies include the Fountainhead, FL; Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Lightwork, Syracuse, NY; and Center for Photography, Woodstock, NY.

Website: rodrigovalenzuela.com | euqinomgallery.com
Facebook: /rodrigo.valenzuela.37 | /euqinomgallery
Instagram: @rodrigovalenzuela_studio| @euqinomgallery