Bubblegutz Enterprises: The Medicine Cabinet by Rodolfo Salgado Jr.
Sheherazade
April 27 - June 9, 2018
Bubbleguts Enterprizes is an ongoing project by Louisville-based artist Rodolfo Salgado Jr. that features an extensive collection of artifacts related to medicine, the body, and consumer culture. This iteration of Bubbleguts Enterprizes explores the human impulse to collect and store materials in an effort to control or subdue bodily failures, from headaches and nausea to runny noses. Though salves and homeopathic treatments are centuries old, modern-day medicine remains complex and inaccessible to some, with self-diagnosis and care supported by pharmaceutical ads, telemedicine, activity trackers, and late-night infomercials. In the spirit of a quack, archivist, and hoarder, Rodolfo Salgado Jr. embodies these DIY approaches through combining everyday objects from pharmaceutical, hygiene, and scientific industries to examine the ways we work to meet social expectations of how our bodies should function.
Before and after the public reception on April 27, Rodolfo will be on site in the Bubbleguts Enterprizes archive, rearranging and reinventing items from the collection, from funnels and tubes to hand-blown glass forms. In this large-scale installation, Rodolfo will mix concoctions and create sculptural assemblages that imitate pressurized bodily systems. In this ever-changing artwork, he will activate and recombine found objects to examine the stories we tell ourselves as we take comfort in the solutions that act on our mysterious inner workings.
- Rodolfo Salgado Jr. and Susanna Crum
Rodolfo Salgado Jr. is a printmaker and interdisciplinary artist who grew up in Southern California with family members involved in dental and pharmaceutical industries. An avid collector, Rodolfo is interested in how printed and manufactured materials instruct us in the ways our bodies should behave. He creates environments and images that merge boundaries between public and private, body and machine, and reality and fantasy. Rodolfo received a BFA from California State University - Chico and an MFA from the University of Iowa, and lives in Louisville, KY.