Rodolfo Choperena: Recent Work
December 3, 2011 – January 15, 2012
Opening: Saturday, Dec 3, 6-9pm
Guthrie Contemporary
3815 Magazine St.
New Orleans, LA 70115
Hours: Tue–Sat 12-5pm
505-897-2688
Rodolfo Choperena, an artist from Mexico who lives and works in San Antonio, Texas, exhibits unique large-scale photo-based abstractions.
Statement:
My work is “abstracted” photography: representational but complicated by the obscuring and absenting of the subject. By inducing movement and the manipulation of light sources, I provoke a figurative tableau towards transforming into abstraction. Every shot, every video is the evidence of a performance, with the acts of montage and manipulation performed in-camera. Movement is the primary performative act. By manipulating the camera’s placement, aperture and exposure settings in relation to color fields, landscapes, light sources, precipitation and seascapes, my work pushes the boundaries of perception to create organic and lyrical freeforms. Resulting images retain their pure chroma. Each is a reinterpretation of the original subject, containing striations that move in varying intervals and rhythms, alternately compressing and expanding positive and negative space. However abstracted a composition may be, a firm representational vantage points plays host to personal objects and scenario manipulations, making each image a direct reflection of my ever-changing environment.
With special thanks to Michael Mehl and the FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA photography festival.
