Lordy Rodriguez: The Shape of Us

Opening reception: Saturday 8 July, 3-5 pm

For more than a quarter of a century, Lordy Rodriguez has utilized an ever-developing visual language inspired by map-making to generate drawings that direct our attention to complex social and cultural issues. From code-switching, to the disenfranchisement inherent in gerrymandered congressional districts, to tracing the history of political protests, Rodriguez reframes data — with his party-colored, pictorial renderings — to reveal inequity.

In his seventh solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery, Rodriguez presents two new bodies of work. In the first set of drawings, he foregrounds water. Investigating lakes Texcoco, Tulare and Karachay, the Ogallala Aquifer, the Citarum Watershed in Indonesia, and the city of Venice, he looks at the ways humans have shaped — sometimes purposefully, but more often not — the resource we so desperately depend upon.

In his Pangea series, Rodriguez imagines new continents formed not by plate tectonics, but based on demographic and environmental statistics. These strange amalgams come equally from cross-cultural traditions of invented, utopic landscapes and the use of data visualization in contemporary culture. As Rodriguez appropriates the outlines of countries and addresses their status in “ranking” lists (such as The Ten Richest Countries, Most Air Polluted Countries, or Most Dangerous Countries), he playfully balances a formal interest in abstraction with a global analysis of the distribution of resources.

Lordy Rodriguez was born in Quezon City, Manila, Philippines, and spent his formative years in Texas. He graduated from the University of Houston, and then earned a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York City and an MFA from Stanford. His works have been exhibited and collected by many museums and his numerous public art projects can be found throughout the U.S. Rodriguez lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.