STATURE

"Stature" features photogravures taken of the artist's studio constructions.

As is typical of the artist, the series masterfully balances on a fulcrum

between fiction and documentary traditions, "commonplace" materials

and rarefied results, flattened photos of ambiguous scale and threedimensional

references. The forms in "Stature" could refer to Brutalist

architecture, outdated machinery, or modernist monsters, but in fact they

are concrete and plaster casts of discarded consumer packaging. Their

immobility, too, is an illusion - all the forms are carefully stacked and

tenuously balanced, rather than glued in place. There is ample metaphor

to be quietly contemplated - i.e., undoing a politically repressive regime's

monuments with one push - but Valenzuela resists didactic urges, and

instead embeds his interests in labor, capitalism, and socio-political

symbols into serene images that slowly reveal their many languages.

Valenzuela's previous work in photography has continually been black and

white, which the artist believes facilitates a simpler reading of the material

and allows for more emphasis on form and iconography. The works in

"Stature", while still monochrome, bring a new palette of rich grey-sepia

tones, lending them an old-fashioned gravitas. The pre-film photogravure

printing process results in images that are more tactile than traditional

photographs, and certainly when compared to the digital image, feel

almost like charcoal drawings. The process also points to Valenzuela's

long-standing interest in valorizing unseen labor - it is heavily physical,

involves collaboration, and can only supply a limited number of handpulled

prints, in contrast to the immediacy and infinite reproduction

capacity we usually expect of photography.

Valenzuela's choice of polystyrene forms and concrete respectively bridge

the throwaway culture that high capitalism incurs and the ubiquity of

institutional structures that wield their authority through material choice.

Having grown up in Pinochet's Chile, Valenzuela has long been familiar

with the imagery of protest and nationalist messaging. With quietly

seductive photogravures, Valenzuela offers a surprising generosity of

layers: a re-evaluation of black-and-white documentary photographic

tradition, art historical awareness, and a fascination with the power of

architecture to impose control. His laboriously constructed mirages

entrance us with their potency.