Statement
Through assemblage, ceramics, hand-blown glass, performance, printmaking, and sculptural installation, my work explores collecting, archiving, and our relationships to the human body. The most memorable times in my life are instances of bodily failure, and their influence on social interactions. Though these experiences are embarrassing, we all have at least one legendary story of physical malfunction to share, and feel the simultaneous urge to conceal it and explain it.From serious illness to burps, flatulence, and halitosis, I ask viewers to enter 2D and 3D spaces filled with colorful reinventions of the inner workings of their bodies, as well as devices to cure or prevent bodily mishaps. Assemblages of found objects like funnels, tubes, and prosthetics propose alternative anatomical mechanisms, to inspire and reframe conversations about parts of the body that we often ignore or subdue. Industrial and organic forms function together in lithographs, etchings, and sculpture, creating an imagined world that merges the approaches of a compulsive hoarder and a methodical archivist. My installations include extensive, ordered collections of artifacts from the 19th- through 21st centuries. By placing found and handmade objects in conversation with one another in invented systems, I question the rational and irrational ways that we work to control our bodies.
-Rodolfo Salgado Jr
