April 15 – July 15, 2023

The Print Center is pleased to present Rodrigo Valenzuela: Workforce, a solo exhibition of new and recent work by the Chilean-born artist. The exhibition is co-curated by Liz K. Sheehan, Independent Curator, and Liz F. Spungen, Executive Director, The Print Center. Workforce is Valenzuela’s debut showing in Philadelphia.

The Print Center is honored to bring the work of the outstanding artist Rodrigo Valenzuela to Philadelphia for the first time. His work makes a meaningful contribution to current photographic practice as well as to discourse on immigration, labor and privilege.

– Elizabeth F. Spungen, Executive Director

Programs

All of The Print Center’s exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public.

Artist Talk: Rodrigo Valenzuela

Tuesday, April 11
6pm
At the University of Pennsylvania, Meyerson Hall, Room B-3 and on Zoom
Watch the Talk

Gallery Talk + Opening Reception

Friday, April 14
Gallery Talk, 5:30pm
With the Artist and Exhibition Curators
Reception, 6 – 7:30pm 

Dinner Date

The Print Center's Spring Fundraiser Celebrating Rodrigo Valenzuela
Wednesday, June 21
Tickets range from $125 – $1,000

Workforce

Rodrigo Valenzuela has developed a distinctive and unique practice situated at the intersection of photography, architecture, immigration and labor. Drawing on life experience as well as his study of photography, art history, literature and philosophy, Valenzuela creates work using a wide range of media, from analog and digital photography to screenprint, photogravure, lithography, collage, film, ceramics and sculpture – all of which are often combined in site-specific installations. The work interrogates the literal and figurative foundations of our built environment and its influence on democracy, identity, labor and immigration. Over the past decade Valenzuela and his body of work have received extensive recognition and accolades, from Core and Guggenheim Fellowships to a prestigious position teaching photography at the University of California Los Angeles.

At the heart of Workforce is Valenzuela’s imagining of new futures for the working class and includes works drawn from the recent series “New Works for a Post-Worker’s World,” “Afterwork,” “Weapons,” and “Devils’ Union.” In addition to framed works and an immersive, site-specific installation on the second floor, in the Zemel Family Gallery the artist’s films Prole (2015) and The Unwaged (2017) are screened.

All images provided courtesy of the Artist.
Photo: Zachary Fabri

Rodrigo Valenzuela (b. 1982, Santiago, Chile; l. Los Angeles, CA) has a BFA in photography from the University of Chile, Santiago; a BA in philosophy from Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA and an MFA in PhotoMedia from the University of Washington, Seattle. His work has been exhibited extensively across the US and internationally and recent solo exhibitions include BRIC, Brooklyn, NY; Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, CA; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR; New Museum, New York, NY; Portland Art Museum, OR; and Lisa Kandlhofer Galerie, Vienna, Austria. Additional venues that have exhibited his work include the Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA; Tufts University Art Galleries, Boston, MA; Triumph Chicago, IL; Site131, Dallas, TX; Getty Museum, Los Angeles; New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Bemis Center, Omaha, NE; The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; artspace, San Antonio, TX; Center for Architecture and Design, Frye Art Museum, Henry Art Gallery and Jacob Lawrence Gallery, all Seattle; Tacoma Art Museum, WA; Hillyer Art Space, Washington, DC; as well as internationally in Austria; Brazil; Chile; Mexico; and Spain. Valenzuela has received many awards and accolades, including an Art Matters Foundation Grant; Artist Trust Innovators Award; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography; Joan Mitchell Award; and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. He has been awarded artist residencies in the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME; MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Lightwork, Syracuse, NY and the Center for Photography at Woodstock, Kingston, NY. He is Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Architecture at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

The Harpo Foundation has made this project possible, including the creation of a new edition of prints.