SELF
David Rodriguez
October 2018
David Rodriguez's self-portraits tell a story about identity and its treatment through the representation of the human face. This exhibition is a product of the artist searching themself over the Internet to find endless faces and people sharing the same name — David Rodriguez. The results create a carefully edited public self-portrait of several anonymous David Rodriguez that are later isolated from their original context and made into the artist’s own by drawing them.
This exhibition is centered around the concept of self-portrait, and the anonymity that a shared given name can have, in spite of this given name’s intention of providing authenticity and individuality to their owner. Even though every portrait of David Rodriguez is different, they are presented in Self as one, thus posing a new way of dealing with identity and the representation of the human figure in present times. A self-portrait where we do not see the face of the artist themself that suggests the idea of a certain loneliness represented in front of the immensity of the world, in which there are copious amounts of other own selves existing concurrently
The graphic representation of a face is an unavoidable practice that takes us back to the beginnings of humanity, with its interpretation shaped by socio-cultural trends. The 21st century and new technologies are not the exception, especially in years marked by the emergence of social media, where the identity and presentation of the self is based on an effective, successful, and very studied portrait.
The exhibition consists of different series of charcoal portraits. The first series, titled Self, is a group of 50 different portraits of David Rodriguez. This is not an individual David Rodriguez but rather a group of men from different ages, different countries, different back stories, but one thing in common: their name. The second group is a series of self portraits from the artist himself, and the last one is one drawing that serves as a tribute to a man, who you might guess is also named… David Rodriguez.
David Rodriguez (1984) is a Colombian-French artist. Born in Bogota, David moved to France in 2004 to continue his higher education, obtaining a MA in Art History from Sorbonne University. David has participated in both group and solo exhibitions in cities such as Strasbourg, Paris, Nancy, Lyon, Austin, and Shanghai, the city he has been calling home for the past years.