As Valenzuela tells the story of these brave protesters in Chile, it is clear he envisions their actual struggle with empathy. Insectile features radiate from a painted darkness Valenzuela designs in his studio down to the last pigment. His protesters are not only humans, they also resemble alien creatures, transformed by single-serving plastic containers. In Valenzuela’s images, each special design overwhelms the face (actually the artist incognito). The DIY respirators reframe the human body and its visage.

Barricades and his new series Masks (2018) trace a journey through the dictatorial shadow of Pinochet and take special inspiration from Neruda.įor Masks, Valenzuela re-created profiles of crafty protesters on the streets of Santiago who use plastic bottles and duct tape to make improvised tear gas masks.

This impressive ascent began in 2005, when Valenzuela traveled from Chile and crossed, undocumented, into the United States. Valenzuela is a fine arts professor of photography at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, who replaced renowned postconceptualist James Welling. This sculptural turn took the primary subject of his primary medium, photography, and accentuated its rebellious energy. This new work productively harangued about the politics of exhibition and created a physical imposition, as all effective installation art does, that had been missing from Valenzuela’s previous series.

In General Song, his solo exhibition at Klowden Mann Gallery in Culver City earlier this year-the title is a nod to Pablo Neruda- Rodrigo Valenzuela amplified the photographs in his series Barricades (2017) with a departure, a dramatic sculptural installation of a riot barricade.

The Reframe by Brian Maddox