Lordy Rodriguez's works start with a geological source and the human urge to locate/define oneself by charting our environment in precise detail. Using the language of cartography, he makes drawings that go beyond map-making into abstracted, imaginary terrain.
A desire to remake the world motivates his drawings. For several years he's been working on a series that redraws the boundaries and locations of the 50 United States and the cities within them (and adds 5 more states). Other works paradoxically use the specific vocabulary of topography to chart invented lands.
The Geological series is a new body of work that pushes the iconography of mapmaking further into abstraction. These works omit the text that is so crucial to cartography. Without text, the map loses its utility, and the void is filled by the viewer's own biases and experiences.
In previous bodies of work, including the Abstracted series and the America series, symbols and colors typical of road maps, such as highways, urban sprawls, and park versus city land, contributed to a certain recognition and sense of familiarity. With the Geological series, all that remains is the landscape -- magnified, fragmented, and devoid of context. Dislocation, a constant theme through his work, operates here on an even deeper level.
I really like them because of the ideas of displacement and boundaries.
He got his MFA from Stanford.
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