Alfredo Rodríguez

CBR is a sculpture project that proposes a degradation and hybridisation of the pre-established forms on which it is based. The result can be taken as the consequence of an interaction between the shapes of motorcycle fairings and the forms of the body, both “sculpting” one another. These motorcycle parts have something in common with the human body itself; they are the layer that provides the object with ergonomics and allows it to receive the body that uses the object.

At the end of this entire process, the Honda CBR 1000 RR, a legendary model, will no longer exist as such and could be thought of as an absence by dint of what we might refer to as a sort of unfortunate inverse engineering, as a kind of misinterpretation of certain parts of the whole that in turn embraces the idea of archaeological remains, given that the idea is to strip the object-tool of its utility, its raison d’être that vanishes as it separates into its parts and ceases to behave as an aesthetic and mechanical whole. The same thing happens when the body of a dinosaur decomposes in the swamp in which it was trapped and where it began to fossilise, albeit with the vicissitudes of the successive Geological Eras that covered those same bones: landslides, earthquakes, water flirtations, the remains of other creatures, changes in pressure and temperature, etc. In actual fact, we are faced with a puzzle that simply cannot be solved, rather akin to a three-letter word without any vowels.

The work of Alfredo Rodríguez (Madrid, 1976) revolves around the photographic image which he subjects to experimental processes of differing degrees of complexity in his studio and laboratory. His practice almost always starts from images that evoke the body but end up becoming an equivocal presence, moving away from the singularity of physiognomy and approaching an idea of expanded flesh. The time of chemistry, photosensitive materials, light, the body and the imprint of the photographic material pass through all the phases of his process, giving rise to a desire to erase or to a fading of the time of the image. In this way, his research strives to preserve the ephemeral, while he endeavours to endow the entire set of events and materials with a stable permanence, as if it were a crystallisation or an encapsulation. Rodríguez is represented by Espacio Valverde in Madrid and he has recently put on exhibitions of his work at the Dos de Mayo Art Centre (CA2M) in Madrid, the Montecristo Project in Sardinia, Matadero Madrid, Sala Arte Joven, and the Istituto Europeo di Design, among others. Alfredo Rodríguez lives and works in Madrid, Spain.