Grant Recipients Richard Pousette-Dart Award Visual Arts 2025

Rodrigo Valenzuela

A close up, black and white portrait of Rodrigo Valenzuela. He looks directly at the camera against a bright white background, wearing a black jacket.
Photo by Zachary Fabri.
  • 2025 Richard Pousette-Dart Award
  • Visual Arts
  • Visual Artist
  • Born 1982, Santiago, Chile
  • Lives in Los Angeles, CA
  • He/Him
  •  
  • Additional Information
  • rodrigovalenzuela.com

Artist Statement

My work addresses Latin American sociopolitical history, labor unions, and undocumented workers. It is shaped by blue-collar aesthetics. Autobiographical elements inform a postcapitalist critique of social and civic institutions. My work blurs documentary and fiction to address the tension between individuals and the way their own communities are often represented.

- December 2024

Biography

Rodrigo Valenzuela is a visual artist working in photography, video, and installation. His practice investigates themes of labor, power, and representation. 

His solo exhibition New Works for a Post-Worker's World at BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2022) explored the ever-shifting concepts of labor in our day, referencing past industrial imagery and offering a disquieting sci-fi vision of the future. The works conjure the elimination of the individual laborer (and their dignity and value), and imagine a workforce supplanted by machines of automation. Large-scale black and white photographs from two ongoing and connected series, Afterwork and Weapons, depicted scenes constructed by Valenzuela using collected urban detritus—wooden pallets, two-by-fours, cinder blocks, and piping. The photographs were mounted to a large wooden sculptural installation, calling forth the artist’s experience as a day laborer upon his arrival as an immigrant in the United States.

Valenzuela’s other solo exhibitions include Work in its Place, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR (2018); American-Type, Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA (2018); Labor Standards, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR (2017); and Future Ruins, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA (2015). He has participated in artist residencies and fellowships at Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA (2024); MacDowell, Peterborough, NH (2016); Core Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (2014-2016); Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE (2015); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2013).

Valenzuela is the recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2024), the Harpo Foundation New Work Project Grant (2022), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography (2021), the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2021), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2017), and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants (2018, 2015).

He holds an M.F.A. from the University of Washington, a B.A. from Evergreen State College, and a B.A. from Universidad de Chile. Valenzuela is Associate Professor and Photography Area Head at University of California, Los Angeles.

A gallery installation of a network of intersecting wooden beams upon which three large-scale black and white photographs are mounted. The beams extend to the ceiling, across the room, and far back into the space. The textured photographs depict industrial scenes assembled by the artist using construction materials, such as two-by-fours, metal piping, and cinder blocks.

Installation view of New Works for a Post-Worker's World at BRIC, Brooklyn, NY, 2022.

A black and white photograph shows of a group of five found-object sculptures situated arranged in front of a dark grey wall made out from of patched metal. The sculptures have are made out of tools, spikes, limbs, and blades, and disc components that make them appear in motion.

Weapon #29, 2023, silkscreen, acrylic, toner, and time cards on canvas, 60" x 96".

In a grainy, high contrast black and white photograph, found-object sculptures sit in a room overlapping and bisecting each other. The forms appear to be made from human bones and spines, cables, and pincers.

Garabato #2, 2024, heliograph, 36" x 30".

In a gallery, four black and white images hang framed on white walls. The wooden floor contains five sunken rectangular slots that house geometric sculptures. Each of the slots is illuminated so you can see the sculptures inside, which heresemble battleships, architectural models, and insects.

Installation view of Journeyman at Klowdenmann gallery, Los Angeles, 2019.

A framed black and white photograph depicts a mechanical sculpture sitting in a room. The sculpture consists of a horizontal segmented column balanced on a round base. The form resembles a piece of construction equipment and casts a long shadow across the floor. The sculpture is surrounded by speckled metal walls.

Stature #8, 2019, photogravure, 31" x 36".

A white sculpture comprised of arranged flat panels with moldedgeometric patterns sits on the floor in a gallery space. The sculpture is situatedin front of a wall comprised of reliefs depicting the same patterns and textures on a larger scale. The sculpture is illuminated by a lightbulb, which increases the contrast of its patterning.

Installation view of Sin Heroes at Shelton Gallery, Houston, TX, 2016.

A dark gallery space showcases five black and white photographs that depict scenes of industrial materials and ruins in high contrast. The photograph in the center hangs from scaffolding, and all the works are illuminated using spotlights. The back wall of the gallery is painted using black and white industrial motifs that echo the content of the photographs.

Installation view of Future Ruins at Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA, 2015.

A high contrast black and white photograph of a dark space is filled with white rectangular forms and white chalk dust and lines, creating a sense of receding space and resembling a construction project in progress.

Hedonic Reversal #3, 2014, photograph, 54" x 44".

Two black Xs made from wooden beams overlap in the center of a black and white photograph. One is set further back than the other creating the illusion of space. On the floor pieces of wire mirror the shapes of the wooden beams.

American Type #5, 2018, photograph, 54" x 44".

A black and white photograph of an industrial space containing wooden barricades on each side. One of the barricades is held up by a traffic cone, and the barricades extend into a second room with a back wall painted to resemble a scaffolding’s shadow.

Barricade #1, 2017, photograph, 54" x 44".