Sarah Rodriguez: Post-Fair 2025

”Living in places with asymmetrical relations of power takes negotiation. So I’ve always tried to work by addition and subtraction. Addition suggests assemblage, a formal strategy I try to make use of.” — Sarah M. Rodriguez 

Sarah Rodriguez’s aluminum sculptures are made of individual casts of organic materials like branches and bones that she collects around her studio in Northern New Mexico as well as objects sent to her by her family in Hawai’i. Contrasting landscapes are represented in her work as Rodriguez notes that "half of my family is Native Hawaiian (Ka naka Maoli) and the other half were European settlers who moved to Texas.”  Her work tries to "inhabit a place, to engage with the non-human world, and to wrestle with the moral and aesthetic stalemate of the American West."  

Her sculptures are inspired by naturally occurring “equilibre” found in nature as well as sculpture by David Smith and Anthony Caro. Rodriguez says, "I'm committed to the experience of art as nonverbal, as an exercise in knowing that the current order of things is not necessary or preordained. We are always becoming done and redone.” Her sculptures are not just meant to memorialize the forms she casts. Instead, they represent the symbiotic universe of these ever-changing landscapes.  

Sarah M. Rodriguez (b. Honolulu, Hawai'i) lives and works in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico. She earned her MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in New Genres (2014) and a BFA From California College of the Arts (2008). She was a participant in the Shandaken Residency (2016) and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. (2010). Her works have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art, The Valley, Taos, Tara Downs, New York, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, Paul Soto, Los Angeles, Depart Foundation, Los Angeles; La Maison Rendez-Vous, Brussels, Folsom Projects, San Francisco, among many others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum.