Nancy Radloff creates her dark, enigmatic worlds through the simplest of materials, the tools of the model maker, and everyday objects. In her floor installation for Intermittent Territory for Alienated Figures, in December 2005 at Outrageous Look, she let a small washcloth hook become a swan, a paper towel roll an intimidating smoke stack, or a ragged black wash cloth on a line stand in for the horrors of Abu Ghraib.

For Window Project, she pares down her vocabulary to a few materials that have conflicting meaning for her. Linoleum, tile, vinyl—Radloff finds these all fascinating for their contributions to cleanliness and order, which are intense preoccupations of her work. Yet her time spent in hospitals while battling mental illness gives these materials another meaning: the cold and sometimes intimidating nature of institutional life.

Radloff lives and works in Brooklyn.