Rodrigo Valenzuela / Nana Mandl Event

Rodrigo Valenzuela | American Type
Project Room: Nana Mandl

Galerie Lisa Kandlhofer is pleased to present the exhibition ’American Type’ by Rodrigo Valenzuela (b.1982, Chile, lives and works in Los Angeles).

This presentation of Rodrigo Valenzuela’s American-type photographs takes its title from an essay by Clement Greenberg, one of the most significant art critics of his day, Greenberg put Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline on the international map by famously identifying a distinctly American characteristic in Post-war art.

Greenberg argued that painting was about the act of painting rather than a complex idea of representation– what you see is what you get. This moment in art history was in keeping with the American discourse of that moment. Following WWII America was fast becoming a great power in the world, one that could impose itself on anything.

This perception of American power is for Valenzuela still very relevant today. In this work he points to the flaws in this approach to representation as a way question what it is about American culture that wants to create something that is devoid of content. As a culture why do we want things to be straight forward, lacking in subtext and complex critical thinking?

As a cultural worker in America, Valenzuela feels it is his responsibility to push this conversation forward, and his own labor as an artist becomes key to his doing so. He regards the process of making photographs very self-consciously. Everything visible in the final image was created by hand.

Carefully crafted sculptural elements of chunky wooden boards painted with graphite as structural forms when photographed appear to exist on a two-dimensional plane and resemble Abstract Expressionist brush strokes. He makes large-scale prints to use as backdrops to additional photographs, creating complexly layered imagery that toys with perception and a sense of space and depth. In spite of seemingly simplistic forms and lines, this is a very labor-intensive process.

As viewers decipher the layers of space depicted within the image and make sense of Valenzuela’s process, it becomes clear how a photograph captures time. In this way he offers evidence of the labor of his practice as a performance for the camera.

About the artist:

Rodrigo Valenzuela (b. 1982, Santiago, Chile) completed an art history degree at the University of Chile (2004), then worked in construction while making art over his first decade in the United States, completing an BA in Philosophy at Evergreen College and MFA at University of Washington in 2012.
Valenzuela is an assistant professor in the Department of Art, University of California, Los Angeles.

Valenzuela is recipient of several awards, including the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant (2017), Open Sessions Artist, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2016), Emergency Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, NY (2015), University of California Artist Research Grant 2015, Artist Trust Arts Innovator Award 2014.

Recent solo exhibitions include Work in Its Place, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene (2018); The Unwaged, Art League Houston, 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.

His work was included in group exhibitions in following institutions: Center for Contemporary Art, PNCA, Portland, 2018; MOCA, North Miami, FL, 2018; The Drawing Center, New York, 2017; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 2016; Jubilee Park and Community Center, Dallas, 2016; Tacoma Art Museum, 2016; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2016; 2015 Biennial Exhibition, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester.

Project Room: Nana Mandl

The artist Nana Mandl elaborates, in her bright material collages, possible visual realisations of present-day media challenges and overloads.

In her colorful material collages, pictures and prints, Nana Mandl develops possible visual implementations of contemporary media challenges and demands. Her haptic collages combine elements of painting with forms of communicatively-representative spheres of advertising, fashion, pop culture and social media.

About the artist:
Nana Mandl (b. 1991, Graz, AT) studied at Kunstschule Berlin Weissensee and received her diploma in fine arts at the University of Applied Art, Vienna.
Recent solo exhibitions include KS Room, Feldbach, Austria (2017); Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien, Graz, Austria 2016.

Her work was included in following institutions: Kunsthalle Graz, Künstlerhaus, Vienna; Kunsthalle am Hamburger Platz, Berlin; Kunsthalle, Museumsquartier, Vienna.

Mandl is a recipient of the Bildrecht Solo Award for the best solo booth presentation at viennacontemporary (2018); Startstipendium, Bundeskanzleramt für Kunst und Kultur Österreich (2017) and the Förderungsstipendium der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien (2014).