Rodrigo Valenzuela's 'Stature' Exhibition at Asya Geisberg Gallery Features Photogravures of Concrete Forms

Rodrigo Valenzuela's exhibition 'Stature' at Asya Geisberg Gallery in New York City ran from October 29 to December 19, 2020. The Chilean-born, LA-based artist created photogravure prints through a multi-step process beginning with polystyrene packaging forms cast into concrete components. These sculptural forms were carefully stacked without adhesives, photographed against an industrial studio backdrop, and translated into intaglio prints. The works reference brutalist architecture, pre-Columbian ruins, and echo Brancusi's studio sculptures and the structural paintings of Avery Singer. Valenzuela's upbringing in Pinochet's Chile and fascination with architecture's power to impose control inform the tension between formalist order and improvisation in the images. Each photogravure is an edition of eight with two artist's proofs. The exhibition is part of a global tour that previously showed at Kandlhofer Galerie in Vienna in October 2020 and will travel to Patricia Ready in Chile in 2021. Despite pandemic slowdowns, home-bound viewers can explore the work through Valenzuela's 2020 monograph 'Journeyman' published by Mousse. The artist's previous work employed photocopies and construction materials to highlight invisible labor, while 'Stature' presents integrated architectures from deconstructed elements. The photogravure process transforms humble materials into monumental images while intentionally disrupting stability through repeated translations between artistic modes.