By Hannah J. Farrow
Opening August 29 at USF Contemporary Art Museum, The Return of the Real exhibition features two artists committed to re-presentation: Robert Lazzarini, a New York-based sculptor, and Rodrigo Valenzuela, a Los Angeles-based artist.
And that’s not a typo: “re-presentation” intentionally has an added hyphen break up the normal reading of the word.
“Because all re-presentations are constructions from a particular subject position, no re-presentation can be absolutely objective or universal,” a press release stated. “Though both artists rearrange, reconstruct, and ultimately distort reality, they do so ultimately to arrive at objects and images that undermine their own truth telling.”
Mr. Lazzarini is most known for creating visual pieces that complicate the space they’re in and how a viewer perceives it. His work is featured in Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and more.
Mr. Valenzuela highlights tensions between an individual and the space around them, using visual doubling that causes the viewer to question what they’re seeing. He’s an assistant professor at the UCLA School of the Arts and has had several solo exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum, the Ulrich Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, and more.
The Return of the Real is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné and organized by USF Contemporary Art Museum.
A visit to The Return of the Real will leave you with new ways of seeing seemingly static truths. To learn more and to plan your visit, view the Institute for Research in Art’s website.
