Who’s there, old question, who’s here

Voloshyn Gallery is pleased to present Who's there, old question, who's here, a group exhibition curated by Harold Mendez. The exhibition includes works by Nikita Kadan, Ronny Quevedo, José de Jesús Rodriguez, and Rodrigo Valenzuela, which examine how evolving narratives and boundaries intersect with questions of inheritance, embodiment, and trace. The exhibition proposes new perspectives while forming a network of philosophical and poetic inquiries.

 

Through this group exhibition Mendez explores the relationship between Europe and Latin America due to exile, war and migration, citing he was "curious how these recurring issues and their consequences are being dealt with now, particularly through a contemporary, diasporic perspective." 

 

The title Who's there, old question, who's here foregrounds questions of presence and address, asking how identities are recognized and positioned in relation to history and autonomy. It suggests a shift from inherited narratives toward living, and/or lived experiences. Each work emphasizes the immediacy of the present while remaining attentive to what persists or lingers.

Serving as an anchor for the exhibition, Rodrigo Valenzuela's Devil's Union #6 establishes the entry point into the encounter that recurs throughout the presentation. The photograph stages two devil-like figures in a moment of concentrated exchange, their gestures oscillating between collaboration and uncertainty. In this way, Valenzuela's image not only stages a moment of collective action, but also implicates the viewer as a potential third presence, drawing them into a negotiation of engagement  vs. complicity.

José de Jesús Rodríguez creates a moment of demand through richly painted and detailed vignettes in which violent histories collide with contemporary narratives, probing the inheritance and identity that shape them. The laborer's pitchforks in Nikita Kadan's sculptures are recontextualized into charged, weaponized forms. His drawings of winged sirens extend this notion, exploring dissonance, death, and loss into mythical motifs. In Quevedo's abstraction of the body, he traces movement and the marks of experience across the Americas, extending the exhibition's meditation on experiencing and living through the inherited. By offering us alternative modes of mapping, Quevedo's mixed-media works are positioned as conduits where re-imagined selves and localities are continuously being re-interpreted.