"I'm a broker," says the 43-year-old Mexico City native, who sort of brings to mind — and ear — the "Y tú mamá también" actor Diego Luna. "I've been a broker for 20 years."
But wait — can your broker bend light? Physically bend it?
It's a skill Choperena only recently discovered within himself. And it is on display in the artist's hallucinogenic landscapes at the new G2 Art Sight gallery in the historic Tobin Hill neighborhood. The exhibition is part of Fotoseptiembre USA.
"This is like a new life for me," says Choperena, somewhat sheepishly, as he talks about his large-scale monoprints of digital color photographic images.
As visitors enter the low ambient light of the gallery, which was once an office space for G2 Design, the big pictures resemble windows in a spaceship, framing views of distant nebulae.
The colorful swirls and striations — yellow, pink and several shades of electric blue — against stark black backgrounds, handsomely (and expensively) framed in black as well, seem to shift and flow, as if the room itself is moving — and us with it.
"My Teopa Wave," for example, evokes a wave crashing. Or a shift in the space/time continuum. It's a beachscape, actually, shot using a Nikon "with an amazing lens that lets a lot of light in." Sitting on the beach at his place in Careyes, on Mexico's west coast south of Puerto Vallarta, Choperena opened up his lens and then manipulated the image, and the light hitting it, with a flick of the wrist. The pink ribbon, for example, is actually a hot pink chair; other colors represent sand, water, perhaps a thatched roof and a pair of yellow running shorts. A rather mundane photo-album snapshot has been transformed into a work of mystery and beauty.
Other images might be a geode under a powerful electron microscope or a swirling Mexican serape seen through a peyote haze. Almost all of the 16 images — some are nearly 6 feet square — evoke Mexico.
"Even though they are abstract, they are definitely a reflection of me," Choperena says. "I am Mexican, and these were shot in Mexico. This is my stuff, my house, my view."
"Unexpected: Recent Work by Rodolfo Choperena" is on exhibit at G2 Art Sight, 601 E. Dewey, through Friday. By appointment. Call (210) 737-2400.