Francisco Rodríguez (b. 1989, Santiago, Chile) lives and works in London. He holds a BFA in Painting from Universidad de Chile, Santiago and graduated with an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Arts in 2018.
The world that Francisco Rodriguez paints is rooted in his childhood in post-Pinochet Chile. His practise probes and fetishises the stage of adolescence; exploring the role-play, implicit violence and humour of his own teenage years. His visual language references multiple sources including Japanese anime, Chinese woodblock prints, film and South American literature.
Often set in the ‘twilight zone’ of sunrise or sunset the narratives of his paintings speak to each other, interiors (which the artist classifies as safe spaces) are juxtaposed with exteriors (which Rodriguez associated with potential menace), there is a sense of a dislocated storyboard in which the viewer is invited to draw connections between canvases. An intricate, non-linear narrative runs throughout, a nod perhaps to the experimental literary heritage of Latin America. The works are knowingly self-referential, his own past paintings often re-appearing as painted posters in new works, a complex lexicon of images that form the basis of his surrealist worldbuilding.
Recent solo exhibitions include, The Weight of the Night, Cooke Latham Gallery, London, 2023; The City and the Dogs, White Space, China 2022; The Silence that Lives in Houses, Cooke Latham Gallery 2021, London; Cuaderno Canario, Galeria Leyendecker, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain 2020; In the night we believe, Chapter Gallery, Cardiff 2020; Midday Demon, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles 2019; The Burning Plain, Cooke Latham Gallery, London 2018 and a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago 2018. Group exhibitions include X Collection 202: Portrait of a Man, X Museum, Beijing, China, 2024 and Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2018, South London Gallery, London.
Rodriguez's work is included in several public and private collections including the Long Museum, China, X Museum, China, DLA Piper Art Collection, V&A Museum, London, Colección Fundación Engel, Chile and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MAC), Chile