For New Dislocations, Rodriguez will present an installation of videos and drawings which further explores his personal take on cartography. Mapping four one-hour car trips in undisclosed locations, Rodriguez documents his experience of the landscape by strapping a video camera to the front grill of his car and taping the road. In order to round out his documentation, he also makes drawings of places both seen and imagined during his journeys. These drawings, which are carefully rendered in ink, would have the pristine authenticity of a genuine printed map, were it not for the absence of all place names, cities, or directional markers. As such, the drawings, like the videos, are formal translations of space, environment, and time.

With this exhibition, Rodriguez continues his ongoing challenge of the map’s cultural authority. By “dis-locating” the audience (i.e., removing the viewer’s specific sense of place) in both the videos and the drawings, Rodriguez creates a kind of non-utilitarian cartography, maps which are powerless to direct one to an appointed destination. In addition, the absence of place names allows Rodriguez to experiment freely with formal concerns like color, shape, and line, while at the same time providing his audience with a unique opportunity for free association. Unlike experiencing a “real” map of a “real” place, his audience can revel in the pleasure of imagination rather than be consumed by issues of identity or paradigm.

With a recent residency at San Antonio’s ArtPace and group exhibitions at the MCA St. Louis and The Tang Teaching Museum, Rodriguez’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, Art in America, and New York Magazine. This will be his second solo exhibition at Clementine.