Evening Speaker: Rodrigo Valenzuela

Thursday, Sep 19, 2019 7 – 8 pm

EVENING SPEAKER – RODRIGO VALENZUELA

Free & Open to the Public

Location: Ferguson Auditorium, Columbia College Chicago, 600 S. Michigan Ave.

Filter Photo is pleased to present Rodrigo Valenzuela as the Evening Speaker for the 2019 Filter Photo Festival.  Valenzuela constructs narratives, scenes, and stories which point to the tensions found between the individual and communities. He utilizes autobiographical threads to inform larger universal fields of experience. Gestures of alienation and displacement are both the aesthetic and subject of much of his work. Often using landscapes and tableaus with day laborers or himself, Valenzuela explores the way an image is inhabited, and the way that spaces, objects, and people are translated into images. His work serves as an expressive and intimate point of contact between the broader realms of subjectivity and political contingency. Through videos and photographs, he makes images that feel at the same time familiar yet distant, engaging the viewer in questions concerning the ways in which the formation and experience of each work is situated—how they exist in and out of place.

Rodrigo Valenzuela, Santiago, Chile 1982. Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Valenzuela studied art history and photography at University of Chile (2004), holds a BA in Philosophy at The Evergreen State College and an MFA at University of Washington. Recent residencies include Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Texas), Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (Maine), MacDowell Colony (NH), Bemis Center for contemporary arts (Nebraska), Lightwork (Syracuse) and the Center for Photography at Woodstock (New York). Recent solo exhibitions include Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, AU (2018), Work in Its Place, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene (2018); American-Type, Orange County Museum, 2018; Labor Standards, Portland Art Museum, 2018; New Land, McColl Center, Charlotte, 2017; Prole, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, 2016; Future Ruins, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 2015. Rodrigo Valenzuela is an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles and the recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell award for painters and sculptors.

 

Image: Rodrigo Valenzuela