Alexis Rockman, Cervid Cervacles (Jacob Riis Beach, Queens) (2015), via Salon 94

Alexis Rockman’s work is expressly involved in the correlations between image and ground, material and subject, often pulling from the biological intersections of human and animal, flora and fauna, or land and water, that define the landscapes of modernity.  Shifting this focus to a more microcosmic level, the artist has opened a show of drawings of New York City wildlife, a project that heightens his sense of delicate relations between nature and its inhabitants, on view at Salon 94. (more…)

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Alexis Rockman, Manifest Destiny (2003-2004), via the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow, is currently open at the Smithsonian American Art Museum until May 8th. It is Rockman’s first major career retrospective, and showcases 47 paintings and works on paper.  The New York City artist has for more than two decades defied the parameters of traditional artistic collaboration through his work with scientists and researchers such as Peter Douglass Ward and molecular biologist Rob DeSalle, and the title of the show is a reference to environmentalist Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring.

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Alexis Rockman, Hollywood at Night (2006), via the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

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Alexis Rockman, Bridge 2006, Via Artnet

On view at Salomon Contemporary is Thunderdome, an exhibition of the work of Alexis Rockman running concurrently with the major retrospective of his work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, A Fable for Tomorrow. While a direct comparison isn’t made outright by the Salomon, Thunderdome references George Miller’s 1985 Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a post apocalyptic action film starring Tina Turner and Mel Gibson. The Thunderdome in the film is “a sanctioned arena, where aggressive human behavior, a basic part of evolutionary history, can be played out without devastating consequences to the planet.” This is a useful reference with which to begin to explain Rockman’s work, which in fantastic detail imagines the world after centuries of human abuse, without the protection Miller’s Thunderdome would offer. The exhibition can also be seen as the gallery becoming Rockman’s Thunderdome, a space where the artist foretells of the dangers of human environmental cruelty, depicting the wreckage using scientific forecasting and hyperrealist painting technique.

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