Constructions

Assembly presents "Constructions," Rodrigo Valenzuela's first NFT project, weaving together two of his most significant photographic series—"American Type" and "Hedonic Reversal"—as a unique set of 28 images. These architectural constructions, which Valenzuela makes in his studio and then photographs, reference forces of urban construction, destruction, and decay. Devoid of the depictions of labor from which these works were created and of which the work is inherently about, the artist also critiques the ambiguity of post-war American abstraction and art world elitism. These works reference autobiographical threads in order to point to the larger sociopolitical backdrop upon which issues of migration and labor play out.

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Rodrigo Valenzuela is a Chilean-born, Los Angeles-based artist working in photography, video, painting, and installation. Using autobiographical threads to inform larger universal fields of experience, his work constructs narratives, scenes, and stories that point to the tensions found between the individual and communities. Much of his work deals with the experience of undocumented immigrants and laborers. His work has been exhibited internationally, including in recent solo exhibitions at Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna; the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS; the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, TN; Klowdenmann Gallery, Los Angeles; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Santiago, Chile. He has held several artist residencies across the US and Canada including a fellowship at the Drawing Center, New York; the Core Fellowship at the Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; and residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME and the MacDowell Colony, NE. In 2021, Valenuzlea was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. He earned his MFA in Photomedia at the University of Washington, Seattle, and has a BA in philosophy from Evergreen State College and a BFA in art history and photography from the University of Chile.