Ingalls & Associates is pleased to present a new series of works on paper by Raul Perdomo, marking his first solo show with the gallery. Perdomo’s drawings create an imagined language by fusing elements of drawing and abstract painting with physics, cartography and medical imaging. Perdomo’s compositions reference the practice of ancient map-making, when maps would often function as visualization tools for navigation. Without the aid of contemporary technological advances, historical maps would be riddled with references of mythological civilizations, mythical creatures, probable dooms and certain wonders.

For instance, Perdomo’s “Collision in the Interzone,” 2007, is a drawing intentionally rendered to mimic a section of the Milky Way. Reminiscent of an intergalactic map, a series of diagrammatic lines signify the elevation changes and contours of an unknown object’s surface. Rendered in black ink, these lines are superimposed over a myriad of delicate irregular shapes built up of successive translucent washes in cerulean blues and crimsons. Spatial references and scales are intentionally ambiguous. Other unknown objects are represented as dark shapes. Such singularities as explosions and implosions of every kind enter the same pictorial space. All of these elements are meant to symbolize occupants from extra dimensions governed by physical laws. The confluence of these improbable visual conditions in the picture plane is suggestive of the uneven distribution of gravity in the universe. The compositions chronicled here are built out of a complex cosmology, which is more an imagined than a reliable representation. The boundaries which available knowledge has not yet penetrated have historically represented archetypal enigmas. In this sense, Perdomo is also drawing a connection with a psycho-history shared amongst explorers.