In Simon Lewty’s new drawings the paper is so stained and ripped that it looks like old parchment. Near the edge of each sheet a “frame” has been drawn, and within it other black lines enclose irregular doodles. Perhaps they are bodies, since as they shift from cartographic projection to shallow three-dimensionality these blobs acquire a semblance of life. Baggy yet weightless, they occupy an equivocal, compartmentalized space where size, direction, and gravity no longer hold sway and images take precedence over (yet may be undermined by) language.

Invented words, which promise more meaning than