Press Release

Francisco Rodríguez's first solo exhibition at WHITE SPACE The City and the Dogs will open on November 5, 2022 at the gallery's Shunyi location and be on view until January 15, 2023.

Rodríguez's paintings draw from his memories of Chile, modern Latin American literature, the traditions of Western art and Eastern visual culture, particularly ukiyo-e and anime. Within the narratives of his paintings, the twilight hour comes to represent the struggles of adolescence, while hysteria spreads through the crowd like a plague.

The title of the exhibition references La ciudad y los perros (The City and the Dogs) a contemporary novel by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Set at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Lima, Peru, the novel depicts the harsh life of several young cadets and their conflicts with the school authorities. Like Llosa's novel, Rodríguez's paintings have shifting perspectives and narrators. Set against the backdrop of Santiago, at the western edge of the Andes, the spectator is emersed in a brutal story of adolescence.

In Rodriguez's painted odes to youth, the crescent moon or the blazing sun hangs alone in the sky, with swaying trees and silhouetted mountains marking the horizon. Birds in twos and threes move from sky to telegraph pole, while an omnipresent humming sound pervades the empty city. Wooden fences and brick walls form a maze-like structure blocking the view: there is danger, but no path of escape. Here, the adolescents appear, often alone, their overconfident footsteps stirring up dust in their wake. Fingers tremble lighting cigarettes, as they walk, stand, and lurk like wild dogs ready for battle. The setting sun has left a burnt glow on their cheeks, and they force a smile, inadvertently revealing the peculiar melancholia of youth.

If the city is the battlefield for these young people, then their homes and classrooms are like caves and spiritual shelters where they can rest their bodies and minds. They lie comfortably in bed, listen to music on a cassette player until they fall asleep, immerse themselves in quiet reading, or indulge in intimate moments of sexual pleasure. Rodriguez's largest triptych to date shows a semi-autobiographical classroom devoid of people. Instead, it is populated with scattered desks scribbled with teenage thoughts, a blackboard showing the geography and arts of Latin America, portraits of revolutionaries and warriors, and pictures from exotic Eastern countries; a multiplicity of ephemera all capturing the daily interests and influences of the teenagers to whom the classroom belongs.

The adolescents will have probably forgotten the mundane details: the sheets on the then familiar bed, the wounds that had not been licked clean, the loneliness so hard to dispel. At the time, they opened their eyes wide, panic sharp like an iron nail as they tried to grasp a glimmer of light in the darkness. Night falls and wild dogs in the city bark like ghosts, as if to break the silence that frightens them.

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Installation Views

Selected Works

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About the Artist

The world that Francisco Rodriguez paints is one of magical realism, a hybrid of the fantastical and the everyday. His visual language references that of film and comics, creating a storyboard of compositions and inviting the viewer to explore the potential narrative links between them. In doing so the audience is rendered complicit, both participant and outsider, insomniac voyeur awaiting the next act. Francisco Rodríguez was born in 1989 in Santiago, Chile and lives and works in London. He studied BFA Painting at Universidad de Chile, Santiago and graduated with an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts in 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include The Silence that lives in houses, Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK (2022); In The Night We Believe, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff, UK (2020); Cuaderno Canario, Galeria Leyendecker, Madrid, Spain (2020); Midday Demon, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2019); The Burning Plain, Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK (2018); Utopías y Desvelos, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile (2018). Recent group exhibitions include A Higher Calling, WHITE SPACE (Shunyi), Beijing, China (2021); The Drawing Biennial 2021, The Drawing Room, London, UK (2021); Gran Sur, Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid, Spain (2020); Wolves by the Road, Assembly House, Leeds, UK (2019); Colectiva 92, Galería AFA, Santiago, Chile (2019); FBA Futures 2019, Mall Galleries, London, UK (2019); Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, South London Gallery, London, UK (2018). Rodriguez's works are included in several public and private collections including the DLA Art Collection, V&A Museum, London, Colección Fundación Engel, Chile and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Chile.

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Also Exhibiting at White Space

About the Gallery

Founded in 2004 in the 798 Art District of Beijing, the contemporary art gallery White Space has successfully launched the careers of numerous emerging artists over the past ten years, bringing their work to leading biennials, museums and art institutions nationally and internationally. The gallery was relocated to the current 1,500-square-meter space in Caochangdi in 2009 to embark on a new series of art programs, becoming the first contemporary art gallery in China to focus on working with young artists. The gallery has worked alongside each artist to deepen individual artistic practices through its curatorial and research-oriented approach, cooperating extensively with art institutions, curators and critics, and becoming one of the foremost pioneering spaces for art in China and Asia.

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F1, BLDG D7
Yard No. 3
Jinhang East Road, Shunyi
Beijing
China
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Beijing F1, BLDG D7, Yard No. 3
White Space
F1, BLDG D7, Yard No. 3, Jinhang East Road, Shunyi, Beijing, China
+86 10 80491779
http://whitespace.cn

Opening hours
Tuesday–Sunday: 10am–6pm
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