David Rodríguez Caballero is one of Spain’s leading contemporary sculptors. He initially started out in cultural management before shifting his interest to creating art in 1998 and moving to the artistic hub of New York City, where he quickly earned an international reputation.
His current work can be framed within the tradition of and is the result of painstaking experimentation which takes its starting point in figurative elements.
Despite being a sculptor known for his exploration of the use of light and materials in three dimensions, it is worth underscoring the importance of paper in his output, given that all his work is ultimately based on drawing and painting. From his beginnings, Rodríguez Caballero has used paper as an embryonic support with which he develops a concept that he later materializes in three dimensions. With this fragile support, the artist experiments, rehearses and probes the plastic and formal possibilities of works that he then translates to aluminium, brass, copper or steel, giving these materials the delicate appearance of a thin sheet, while at once conveying the robustness of metal. However, Caballero also uses paper as a medium in itself and not only as part of his prior research.
His most recent three-dimensional experimentation is focused on what the artist calls abstract metal drawings which are inspired by a personal, emotional event: his father’s neuronal condition. These sculptures, whose visual appearance recalls metallic meshes seemingly suspended in the air, bring to mind complex neuronal connections and dovetail with Rodríguez Caballero’s interest in drawing in space.
These works, of which the BBVA Collection has three examples, can be traced back to a series of monochrome drawings of scrawls created through the repetition of a linear geometric pattern. These compositions possess a powerful sense of vibrancy thanks to the use of bright colours and have all the strength and sculptural power of his three-dimensional works. These delicate yet at once highly energetic drawings capture Rodríguez Caballero’s experimentation with visual representation, in two and three dimensions, using the same aesthetic and plastic approaches, managing to suggest the electrical impulses of the brain in an absolutely poetic tone.