In his works, Rodríguez complicates reductive understandings of identity by placing disparate historical and personal references within a single work. “We sometimes end up creating systems to understand ourselves and others,” the artist says, “[which] also become the things we always have to push against.” In I’m not a burning man, I’m a burning, man (2021) and Death to the Fascist Insect (2024), Rodríguez draws on Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco’s Man on Fire (1939). Using a variety of media, the artist paints fragments of portals and windows onto his canvas, illustrating his multifaceted, diaristic approach to understanding the world around him. In Move Over, Denzel (2024), Rodríguez depicts Denzel Washington from the 2004 film Man on Fire. The artwork’s design and bristling figurative imagery mimics the artist’s conflicted feelings about the film: his frustration with stereotypical depictions of Mexicans on one hand, and his personal enjoyment of the film on the other. Also referenced in the painting is Diego Rivera’s Partition of the Land (1924), which represents the redistribution of land to the impoverished after the Mexican Revolution. All of Rodríguez’s myriad imagery combines to reflect the competing and unresolved visions of Mexican identity and culture.

Materiality is crucial to Rodríguez’s practice, from his early training as a community muralist to his use of fresco and recent explorations in mosaic, wood, and scagliola plaster technique. Through fresco, the artist translates his questions on identity and narrative to a more material space. “Fresco being incorporated into these acrylic oil paintings really shifted how I think about painting. It spoke to the brittleness of things, a brittleness of history, but also image and having that capacity to both crumble but also be rock solid.” Works such as Thursday (2023) or City Living (2024) use chicken wire, sand, and lime putty to reflect this more deliberate relationship to artmaking. In recent works, Rodríguez has shifted away from detailed image-making toward a slower, more tactile method of production. “I was thinking a lot about my mom and prayer and how she sort of grounds herself in that. I needed something repetitive that felt materially focused,” the artist says. Across his practice, Rodríguez finds inspiration in both material and culture, creating a body of work that reflects an expansive way of understanding ourselves and the world around us.