Shana Nys Dambrot
In materially operatic sculptural works for floor, wall, and sometimes outdoors, Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio reconfigures found clothing and other discarded objects collected in Los Angeles, along with casting using naturally-derived mediums like adobe, amber, and a rubber made from the sap of the Castilla elastica, a species native to El Salvador. This physical and action-based merger of materials is clear in its symbolism of migration, time, memory, preservation, ecology, accretion, and personal history—but it is also poetic and sublime, almost overwhelming in its translucent, mottled, golden and glowing but unsettling and queasy honey-like expanses of spillage.
Installation view of MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, at The Geffen Contemporary (Courtesy of MOCA. Photo by Jeff McLane)
Aparicio also casts the bodies and bark of moribund Los Angeles trees in the Salvadoran rubber, in a process that leaves the trees’ bodily traces in the transfer and forms the foundation for a series of imposing fabric-like hangings meaningfully embellished with the found textiles, paint, and other mediums into motley, majestic, distressed, organic, tactile, double-sided sewn works evoking hunting lodge hides, quilting, royal tapestry, geological accrual, and organic entropy. These and other inventive, affecting works across land, time, action, material, and heritage (as well as a witty, salient site-specific mural) are on view at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary through June 2024.
Installation view of MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, at The Geffen Contemporary (Courtesy of MOCA. Photo by Jeff McLane)
L.A. WEEKLY: When did you first know you were an artist?
Even though I grew up on the floor of my dad’s art studio in Mid-City Los Angeles, I never really considered myself an artist. But I didn’t think I wasn’t one either. I actually started my undergraduate degree as a math major. I soon realized that art-making could be anything. Rational or imaginative. Now I think of art as a language to explore or say anything.
What is your short answer to people who ask what your work is about?
I was told by a mentor that when you don’t want to talk about your work, just say you’re a landscape painter—no one ever asks questions after that. In some ways I actually am.
Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, La ceiba me salvó / The Ceiba Saved Me, 2020, cast rubber with ficus tree surface residues on found cloth; glazed stoneware; twine; and wooden support, 122 × 86 × 5 3/4 in. (Collection of Michael Sherman and Carrie Tivador. Image courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo ©Ruben Diaz.)
Did you go to art school? Why/Why not?
I did. I thought that Salvadoran voices wouldn’t get heard without the degree. I think that’s changing now, but it was my personal experience growing up and seeing previous self-taught generations go unnoticed.
What artist living or dead would you most like to show or work with?
I have always loved and looked up to Jimmie Durham for his uncompromising complexity and humor. I like when someone’s work makes me laugh but there’s also a depth to it.
Detail of prefossilized amber embedded with found objects. (Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo and ©Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio)
Do you listen to music while you work? If so, what?
I listen to music of every genre. I have ADHD, so I work late at night with very loud music to keep me focused. It sounds counterintuitive when I say it out loud.
Social media, please!
IG: @EddieRodolfoAparicio
Installation view of MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, at The Geffen Contemporary (Courtesy of MOCA. Photo by Jeff McLane)
Detail of prefossilized amber embedded with found objects. Courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council. Photo and ©Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio)
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