At first glance, Lordy Rodriguez' art looks like something a public elementary school should have put in the dumpster last year. He works in naive-looking maps, using mappy colors and block lettering curved along topographic illusions. But Rodriguez' cartography is fictional, indicating a smirky take on various realities, not geographical property. "Maps have such a great potential for any kind of discourse." he says. "You could talk about anything and relate it to a map somehow." He's only one of the many contributors to
"Cartographic Imagination: Mapping in Contemporary California Art," which runs concurrently with a sister show, "An Atlas." Another of our favorite artists, Michael Arcega, puns his way through the representation of continents, constructing them out of canned meat food product in
SPAM/MAPS.
A reception for "Cartographic Imagination" starts at 1 p.m.
Sept. 19-Oct. 15, 2009