Issue # 7 Francisco Rodriguez
Curated by: Octavio Zaya
Chilean artist Francisco Rodríguez paintings are a kind of journey towards intriguing spaces and situations, sometimes dark and sometimes inexplicable, at times ordinary and, at others, impenetrable. Taken together, these works are unexpected narratives, like Japanese haiku, full of innuendo and ambiguous ellipses. But it is not only in his representational content that Rodríguez seems to establish his relationship with Japan. His flat painting using solid colors, and his simple patterns and compositions, also refer to Japanese graphic animations and drawings, to that tradition that inspired so many post-impressionists.
His prolific work is wrapped, and also, in turn, unfolds, around complex narratives that approach strategies and resolutions closer to film and to literature in combination with his own imagination. In many cases, his compositions unfold around these confluences, as paintings made up of various other paintings, relationships, and disjunctions, shaping images, stories, and spaces, which combine to offer us a frieze of his vast imaginary.
It is all about slowing down the process of that energetic imagination — which is undoubtedly reinforced in all those references mentioned — and making more open, and perhaps more enigmatic, our experience of the work.
Francisco Rodriguez, b. 1989, Santiago, Chile. Lives and works in London, UK
Holds an MFA at Slade School of Fine Art / UCL, London, United Kingdom 2016-2018,a Post-graduate diploma in Painting, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile 2012-2013and a BA in Fine Arts, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile 2008-2012His solo exhibitions include: 2020 In the night we believe, Art in the bar - Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, Wales; 2019 Midday Demon, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USAl calor del cemento, Galería Leyendecker, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain 2018
The Burning Plain, Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK. Utopías y desvelos, MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art), Santiago, Chile. Some group exhibitions where his work has been included are: 2020; ARCO Madrid, Galería Leyendecker, Madrid, SpainGran Sur, Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid, Spain Zona MACO 2020, Galeria Leyendecker, Mexico City, Mexico
2019; Estampa Art Fair 2019, Galería Leyendecker, Madrid, Spain The Jealous Prize Exhibition 2019, Jealous Gallery, London, UK; ARCO Lisboa, Galería Leyendecker, Lisbon, Portugal Wolves by the Road, Assembly House, Leeds, UK Art Lima, Galería AFA, Lima, Perú I LOVE PAINT, Patel Gallery, Toronto, Canada ARCO Madrid, Galería Leyendecker, Madrid, Spain Colectiva 92, Galería AFA, Santiago, Chile; FBA Futures 2019, Mall Galleries / Federation of British Artists, London, UK
Octavio Zaya is a curator, writer and editor living in the US since 1978. He is Executive Director of the Cuban Art Foundation. He was Director of Atlántica, a bilingual quarterly journal from 2000 to 2018 (Las Palmas, Spain). From 2005 to 2013 he was Curator at Large of MUSAC (Leon, Spain). He is a member of the Artistiic Committee at MALBA (buenos Aires), of the Advisory Board of Performa (New York), and is on the Editorial Board of Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art (Duke University); a Contributing Editor of Flash Art, and a contributor to art-agenda/e-flux (New York).
He was a curator in Okwui Enwezor’s team at Documenta 11 (Kassel, 1998-2002). He was also a curator at the 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennials (1995 and 1997). He has curated more than 30 museum exhibitions worldwide ((including those at Guggenheim Museum, NY, 1996; Reina Sofia, Madrid, 1999 and 2000; Kunstforeningen, Copenhague, 1997 y 1998, etc.), and he has authored more than 30 books and catalogues on young and contemporary artists, and contributed to numerous artists’ books and catalogues. In 2013 he was the curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 55th Biennale di Venezia selecting Lara Almarcegui to represent Spain. Recently he organized a large retrospective of the work of Luis Camnitzer for Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid (2018-2019).