david constantino salazar 

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WORK IN PROGRESS 

Embodied in One

HYBRID 

ROOSTER /  WOLF

Artist Statement

13salazar@gmail.com

I am working on a new sculpture titled Embodied in One.  It is the last piece in a larger body of work I call The Bird Series. It is a sculpture of a hybrid animal whose upper body is that of a wolf, and its lower torso a rooster. As it is laying on the ground, this four foot long creature rests its heavy upper body, stretching its head back only to gnaw on its own chicken foot.  I am interested in exploring ideas of polarity as embodied in a predator and prey relationship in scenarios where they coexist. At what point would this creature stop devouring itself?  This creature may not exist outside the realm of metaphor, but at one point mythology did play a fundamental role in understanding the world’s mysteries through the creation of such creatures. 

Each allegorical piece in The Bird Series expresses a denunciation of the wrongs committed by humans unto each other or unto the inhabited landscape.  The predecessor to Embodied in One was Pigeon (2008).  This bronze sculpture is a larger-than-life obese pigeon, a symbolic portrayal of the city's growth and expansion.  Rather than the reputed bacterial scruff, I imagined a charmingly gigantic pigeon adorned with magnificent plumage.  I used the pigeon for its iconic association to the urban environment.  In its stance it holds both hubris and humility, its overbearing size a direct reflection of its city’s immoderation.

I completed the first of the bird series Tower in 2007.  Tower is a bronze sculpture of chicks climbing on top of one another creating a precarious tower.  At first glance they appear adorable but at a closer look a sense of desperation falls upon the piece, as the chicks are made out to be devouring one another in a frantic scramble of survival of the fittest.  At a distance stands a single chick deliberating whether or not to join into the chaos.  In this piece I play with the juxtaposition between the endearing qualities of the baby chicks and the brutality of their actions.  As a result of Tower, I continue to explore the idea of metamorphosing baby chicks. Some have grown long tails, the tip of the tail and the head of the chick meeting for the first time.  They look at each other, discovering each end of the body.  In their curiosity they soon forget they have come from the same body.  Now there is a predator and prey.  Another chick morphs into a reptile, as if something went awry inside its egg.  A new life, young but ferocious. 

 Work in Progress

 2008

Orifices in Bowls to be cast as one piece.

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Plaster Casts

                                            

                                            

My new body of work is entitled Parallel Continuums. It is a series of wine goblets and dessert bowls to be cast in bronze. The inner walls of the goblets and bowls are lined with what appears as meaty flesh, accompanied by a plump small anus peering up at the viewer.

I am interested in exploring the body’s interior and exterior simultaneously and the openings that allow matter in and out. I am interested in the body’s most primal biological functions: consumption, digestion and egression. Not only are these processes innate to our self-preservation, but also they affect the state of our health, both body and mind. These biological functions are similar to the function of our brains: we take information in through the portals (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, etc.), we process it through thought, and then we output it through action. What we put in directly affects what we put out, depending on our own processing system in between. Our actions then inform what we consume next. It is a cycle.

The wine goblets and dessert bowls reference consumption through recognizable objects. We consume in two ways, out of need and out of desire, but we get to choose how we respond to these feelings of need and desire. Neither wine nor dessert is a biological necessity. By using these types of vessels I am referring to the extras that we take in, often in excess, because of desire and temptation.

Work in Progress 

2010

Baby 

2010, Plaster Cloth

Corner wall Orifice 2010

Plaster

Wall Orifice 2010

Plaster

PIGEON

WATER BASED CLAY 

TO BE CAST IN BRONZE 

H15" x W12" x L20"