Canaveral Blues
Manuel Rodríguez & Roland Miller
August 8 - September 4, 2015
Manuel Rodríguez and R W Miller propose DIY space travel from cornerstore’s launch pad. Miller’s suburban idyll lines the small gallery: this white-picket fence of digital veneers and printed grass evokes the imagery produced by satellites. Collapsing traditional American boundaries with machinic images is part and parcel of privatized space trips—after all, satellite transmissions give us images of home for consumption, and images of earth for strategic [ab]use. From the surface of Jupiter to the neighborhoods we navigate, satellite imagery presents present uniform surfaces. cornerstore’s suburbia is stage for Manuel Rodríguez’s DIY space device: lush plots have always been needed to go interstellar, and part of the whole trip is realizing our own resources we were bound from on earth. The green lawn is a first step to a plot on mars, which won’t just be living here refracted. We cannot dwell on the surface of this earth any longer: it is not where we have gone or what we’ve done, but invocation of our setting that drives us away.
Satellites brought us the “World Picture,” an undivided image of the earth. Not only does space offer us limitless though similarly undivided content, it, unlike the earth, allows us to be without boundary. Space conquest is not the creation of new territories—it is the impetus to destroy the extant boundaries at home.
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Manuel A. Rodríguez-Delgado is an assemblage and installation artist recently based in New York City. His work is concerned with the reconciliation of post-colonial anxieties through the development of projects that seek to emulate technological models of efficiency of the military-industrial complex. His work has been shown in various venues in and outside of the U.S., such as Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (San Juan, PR), Peregrine Program, Defibrillator Gallery and The Mission (Chicago, IL). His is also an invited artist for the Seoul Art Space Geumcheon (Seoul, South Korea), recipient of the LeRoy Neiman Fellowship, and has been a resident artist in the Luminary Program (Saint Louis, MO) and Epic Epoch (New York, NY).
R W Miller is a Chicago-based artist known for prints, collages, paintings, and installations exploring images as material. Wide-ranging output presents the proliferation of digital media as a form of decentered propaganda. Media production has become the mechanism through which we market the idealization of our desires and medicate the loss of dreams once shared. He also co-directs Julius Caesar NFP, an artist-run experimental space. Programming promotes diversity and professional opportunities for young and under-represented Chicago artists, while elevating the platform by collaborating with national and international artists. The space is currently under consideration for Not-For-Profit designation.