We recently connected with Rodrigo Flechoso and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rodrigo, thanks for joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I remember deciding to develop a professional career in the artistic or creative field as a transcendental and at the same time bitter step. My relationship with the plastic arts began when I was very young, I don’t remember exactly when, because I have always seen myself with pencils or paints in my hands. Drawing has accompanied me all my life. I loved to enjoy myself by tracing shapes on paper, copying images that attracted me or capturing what was around me. However, I never attended painting classes, I acquired the skills on my own, encouraged by my own curiosity, my intuition and a certain obsession to perfect my technique. Fortunately, it was a skill that I was able to improve over the years thanks to having shared it with my sister, Silvia Flechoso, who is now a professional artist and with whom, as a child, I had a certain rivalry.

At school I was called “the artist” and, although I often saw myself as an artist as I grew up, it wasn’t until I started high school that I became more aware of how important it would be to take the decision to continue along that path. With each passing year, the enrollment process forced me to choose more and more specific subjects, which progressively directed my path towards whatever I wanted to do in the future. Although I secretly longed to be able to go in the direction of what I was passionate about, I gradually oriented my training towards the health sciences, since at home I was expected to do medicine. I don’t know whether it was pressure from my parents, my high academic record, a lack of personal determination, a secret fear of uncertainty, a strange conviction that I had ignored for years, or the stereotypical inculcation of the “uselessness” of art and how difficult it would be to make my way in that world; they all tipped the balance in favour of that inertia that led my career in the opposite direction during my secondary and baccalaureate years.

That inertia came to an end when we had to face an entrance exam that each of us saw as a determining factor in our future aspirations. I remember that period as a great personal struggle in which the lack of support from people close to me came into conflict with the desire to give back to that child, who had been silenced for years, his love for self-fulfilment in drawing. So, since none of the subjects I had been studying would be decisive in my university entrance exams for Fine Arts, I decided, a week before the exam, to prepare one of the arts subjects from scratch, in which I got the highest mark and was finally able to begin my higher studies in Fine Arts in Madrid.

I don’t mean to deny my previous training, in fact, I think it was very enriching, but now that all this is so far behind me, knowing that I came across a much wider and more complex world than I had imagined, seeing some of my aspirations come true and, above all, meeting people with similar interests and concerns, has made it all worthwhile. Fortunately, I think I am lucky enough to have ended up in a career that, from my point of view, is purely vocational, with its ups and downs. And this is something I would have wanted my high school self to know. And what better proof of having chosen the right path than to have received both the Extraordinary Prize for the best record of my promotion within the Faculty, as well as the National Prize that the Government awards to the best records in the country in their respective area. Now I continue to develop as an artist, a task that I combine with teaching at my university and researching my doctoral thesis.

Rodrigo, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Although university did not fulfill many of my expectations and the slight disenchantment that accompanied me especially in the last years of my degree, I do recognize that it was somewhat fruitful. There I came into contact with techniques I had never worked with before, such as analogue photography or working with resins and polymers in sculpture. I also developed procedural strategies that would mark the character that my work would acquire, while I became familiar with themes related to the world of self-representation and autobiography. With each project I made, I realized that it is impossible to speak from a voice, body, space, time and experience other than one’s own. Even if we address a broader subject, it is inevitable to approach it from the “autoethnographic”. Therefore, I believe that there is a strong self-referential imprint in every creative field.

This way of working was also influenced by something that anyone who has received a training in the arts will identify with: the need for a model and not having one at a given moment. This circumstance forces you to work with your own body as a tool, as a medium, to end up becoming a motif of representation. After all, we cannot be indifferent to our own image, it challenges us, we live with it, it is familiar to us. On the other hand, in my years of university training, I also got used to working with a field notebook to fill with ideas, notes or sketches of pieces that progressively take shape between its pages. In it I also usually collect pictures of works and artists that interest me or that I think may inspire me, as a visual atlas with which to establish associations or parallels with my own works.

During my Fine Arts degree I also began to participate in my first group exhibitions, but I think the most important thing was to find people with whom I shared interests, concerns and aspirations. That’s how “Espacio Vértice” came about in 2015, an initiative by Constanza Huerta de Soto through which we could promote our work, find clients, find a space to use as a studio and make ourselves known. But above all, to find continuity in artistic creation once we had finished our degree. The platform was dissolved a few years later, but it served to savour the creative context outside the academic framework.

At the same time, to promote my work, I applied for a large number of artistic residencies, prizes and competitions to finance projects, something I have not stopped doing today. I consider it crucial for a young artist trying to make his or her way. Often, within the jury, there are gallery owners who might be interested in your work and, regardless of the result, it can be useful for you to make new contacts or to start shaping aspects of your work. Generally, when something comes out of a call for entries, it gives rise to many others. And above all, it forces you to think about how you present and publicize your work yourself. It makes you consider all the agents that could be involved in the materialization of the project you are submitting, and to set specific dates. It often involves a lot of hard work in the layout of dossiers. It also involves constant publication on networks and perhaps the most indispensable tool: a website. In the end, at least in my case, an artist is also supposed to be his or her own manager and content distributor, which I also consider plays against the time you dedicate to the production of new work. Nevertheless, the fruits came out little by little. I never stopped combining creation with academic training, as I considered it enriching to maintain that context. So much so that, thanks to the people I met on the master’s course I enrolled in at the Reina Sofía Museum, I had my first solo exhibition in 2018. I exhibited my project “Obverse and Reverses” (“Anverso y Reversos”), which I started in 2016 and which still has continuity in the present.

I like to use the word “projects” to refer to my works, as they are the result of an organic process by which an idea is projected forward. I also like to refer to my works as “pieces”, as I consider my production to be essentially objectual, material, physical. I don’t favour any particular technique, I tend to work in a multidisciplinary way. Generally, it is the subject I deal with that usually demands its own process or suggests working with one material or another. In it I usually play with the transparency or translucency provided by materials such as polyester resin, methacrylate, vinyl, paper pulp, glass or mirrors. I feel a special predilection for the latter, as the mirror has always had a strong symbolic character in the world of self-portraiture.

“Obverse and Reverses” explores the decomposition of the self-portrait through its multiple reflections, breaking the uniqueness of the face and winking at the myth of Narcissus. Narcissus is very important in my work because he is considered an archetype of the act of self-portraiture, as he identifies himself in the image returned to him by the pond. A self-portrait is a game of self-recognition. I also find myths useful in addressing certain themes because they are timeless, capable of being brought into the present. I also find inspiration in allegories of the collective imaginary that orbit around figures related to the face or the body: the shadow, the trace, the mask, the reflection.

Another of my projects, entitled “Presence Gradient” (“Gradiente Presencia”, 2017-2018), uses the concept of the shadow to construct a self-portrait. Through a site-specific project in which I intervened the glass of a window with a vinyl of my own image, I achieved the projection of an ever-changing self-portrait. As it was a project whose integrity depended on the site in which it was located and as it wasn’t, strictly speaking, an “object”, it makes it difficult to see it as something that can be exhibited elsewhere. When in 2017 I participated with “Presence Gradient” in a group exhibition organised by “Espacio Vértice”, I was only able to present the documentary and audiovisual material generated, as replicating the installation would have required very specific spatial conditions. I imagine that this would be the same problem with regard to its possible sale.

I have been using the motif of the trace more recently in the project I have been involved in for the last few years, “Gallegos del Río” (2017-2022), where I address the theme of family memory and the power of the materiality of domestic objects to evoke it. More specifically, the piece “Altar” is the extraction of a paper pulp casting (like a death mask) from the living room sideboard, a characteristic piece of furniture in all homes where family photos or objects of great emotional charge are usually displayed. The removal of this large-scale mask was due to the state of deterioration of the house where the piece of furniture was located, which threatened to make the family story contained on its shelves disappear due to the risk of collapse. The choice of paper as a material in this case served to reinforce the fragile nature of memory.

All these themes are something I have also been exploring in depth in my academic career. I am currently a professor of sculpture in the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Complutense University, a task that I combine with my PHD research. In it I address all the aspects mentioned above and I have noticed that I can apply them to my own work, enriching it. At the same time, I can also use the experience gained during the creative process in the studio to look at these issues with different eyes in my dissertation as well as I generate a positioned knowledge.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I think every young artist is eager to be told how to get started. I would have liked to have been encouraged earlier to apply for calls and competitions, because I think it’s the most effective way to make your work known and to encourage you to continue producing. This is not to say that it is the only way. Also, another thing I feel my training lacked was information on how to become a professional artist: from how to issue an invoice to what rights we have over our works. Additionally, I would also be grateful to have met someone when I was a child who had developed their professional career within the artistic sphere in order to dismantle all those preconceived ideas when it came to deciding which path to follow.

What do you find most rewarding about being creative?

I believe that art has no purpose other than itself, something that in people’s eyes may be “useless”, but it is this very “uselessness” that makes it subversive. It is a game, and like all games, it has a power to enunciate reality.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.rodrigoflechoso.com
• Instagram: @rodrigoflechoso
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzXPWJoh3s0gtC2fp4kYqkg
• Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user66117929

Image Credits
Rodrigo Flechoso exhibiting his project “Gallegos del Río” at the X Edition of the Revela’T Festival (2022). Rodrigo Flechoso, “Self-portrait” (CNC on transparent polyester resin, 10.5 x 10.2 x 7 cm, 2016) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Obverse & Reverses” project (Proyecto “Anverso y Reversos”, Madrid, 2019) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Presence Gradient” (Gradiente Presencia) (Site-specific, Madrid, 2017-2018) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Altar” (“Gallegos del Río” project, paper pulp and samba wood, 203.5 x 106.6 x 36 cm, 2021) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Genealogy” (“Gallegos del Río” project, artist book, digital print on Hahnemühle 80g rice paper, 176 x 108 cm, 2021) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Pellejos” (“Gallegos del Río” project, graphite on japanese paper, 200 x 120 cm each, 2022) Rodrigo Flechoso, “Awakening” (“Despertar”, graphite on paper, 50 x 42.3 cm, 2021) Rodrigo Flechoso working on “Pellejos” (Zamora, 2022)