Nearly Contemporary:
Odalis Valdivieso

Nearly Contemporary is an exhibition featuring a new series of works on paper and wood panel by Miami-based artist Odalis Valdivieso. The project is part of Oolite Arts’s Windows@Walgreens program.

Fragments of internal dialogues about the exhibition

… On the exhibition

Odalis Valdivieso

To me, an exhibition is specifically defined as an experience—concerning object, subject, and knowledge—that takes the shape of a visual arrangement. Like any experience, it runs the risk of having unexpected results, but it should always allow us to know more than what we already knew about our process. The experience must give us the agency to break-out of the limits of our everyday lives and become an-other within the exhibition for any desired amount of time.

OV

The shift from previous works is present in this show, where a series of faceted representations of humanoid-like or spectral volumes are portrayed at the center of wooden panels and papers. They are opaque and transparent planes caught on rotation, coming from, fragmenting, or going to another transformative stage. They are also forms on a sensitive surface that allows them to contract and expand simultaneously.

OV

I am also thinking on an echo chamber and how these specters sound within the space. Even though they seem locked, they can still allow language to circulate within the premise of the street sounds.

OV

The works—seen from behind a commercial vitrine—may show as removed from the gallery space. Yet, I think their insertion on a temporal space as such, that is opened up to transients, affect them from the status of belonging to the arts to—perhaps—the one of the visual merchandising decorations; freeing them from the constraints of interior architectures and slow-pace trajectories as well.

OV

I also think that encountering the work unexpectedly—as in this case—transforms the experience of purposely visiting an exhibition at an art venue. The works then, suggest models of democratizing the viewing experience to a larger audience.

About the artist:
Odalis Valdivieso (b. 1969, Caracas) has been featured in exhibitions such as Invisible, Centro Cultural Chacao, Caracas; Arrhythmic Suite, MDC Museum of Art+Design, Miami; The Sinking Parenthesis, Central Fine, Miami;  This is not a Museum, Centro Cultural Español, Miami; Paper Folding, Alejandra von Hartz Gallery and Dimensions Variable, Miami; Grid’s World, Locusts Projects, Miami; Object Implied, Emerson Dorsch, Miami; Play-forms, Woodland Gallery, Chatham University, Pittsburgh; New Work Miami 2010 and 2013, Miami Art Museum; 365 Lives, Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art; Practices Remain, Regina Rex, New York; among others. She was the recipient of the 2004 and 2014 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, the Wavemaker Grant, as well as various Miami-Dade Community Grants. Her last residency was at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.