Nancy Rodrigo “queering paracosmic a bit”

Soho20 Chelsea Gallery

[Image: Nancy Rodrigo "Nesting Infestation" (2019)]

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SOHO20 presents queering paracosmic a bit, a selection of mixed-media drawings by Nancy Rodrigo.

In the late 1970s British psychologists began using the term “paracosmic fantasy” to describe the elaborate and longstanding visual worlds most often instigated by highly imaginative children but that for such individuals regularly extended into adulthood. Well-known examples include Tolkien’s “Middle-earth,” the fantastical kingdoms fabricated by the Bronte siblings after the death of a family member, or Mark Hogencamp’s extensive village of “Marwencol,” created to rectify a brain trauma.

Culling from a host of references - among them, past traumas, Medieval illuminations, and medical illustrations, Rodrigo’s drawings circulates within an intricate, oft-repeating, and interconnected cast of paracosmic characters, gestures, and abstract forms.

Visually Rodrigo’s work oscillate labilely between referents, often hovering between multiple emotional states at once. Gummy vaginal canals drift into skeletal creatures, at once benign and fear-worthy; a scar-like seam may evolve into a branch, a sea urchin, or the details of a white supremacist garb.