Lordy Rodriguez: Landscapes

Lordy Rodriguez has made a career of drawing maps. His first cartographic project, representations of each of the United States as he wished them to be, came from a desire to envision his own personal sense of place and history. His newest drawings, based on techniques of topographical plotting, explore our reliance on the constructed realities of maps.

From Mapquest and GPS navigation systems to the Doppler 3000, we relate to our environment through abstracted representations. In Rodriguez’s world, jagged, swooping or swirling forms describe drifting silt dunes, volcanic island chains, underwater trenches and evidence of tectonic shifts. Pared-down to brightly colored contours — without symbols, direction, text or indicia of scale — his representations of place are abstracted beyond map-making traditions. Rather than tools for navigation or finding one’s place, these drawings are a dizzying realm where one is pulled in and becomes lost.