*Quite a painter.
Alexis Rockman
A Natural History of New York City
April 18 - May 5, 2016
SALON 94
12 E 94th St, New York, NY, 10128
Beginning April 18th, Salon 94 will present A Natural History of New York City, an exhibition of 75 works on paper that employs an ancient technique of depicting images of flora and fauna, while referencing the straightforward approach of a naturalist’s field guide. Created with organic matter such as fossils, soil, sand and detritus gathered on streets, parks, construction sites and beaches, the artist’s field drawings depict and explore the history of life in New York City and its astonishing biodiversity. The timeline spans from the ecology of the fossil record, the Carboniferous period (360 million years ago), pre-Columbian, Europeans arrival, to the plants, animals, insects, and birds that make their living here now.
For A Natural History of New York City, Rockman researched the history of the region’s ecosystems and consulted with Carl Mehling, collections manager of the American Museum of Natural History’s amphibian, reptile, and bird fossils unit, Chris Bowser, Education Coordinator, Hudson River Estuary Program, NYS Water Resource Institute at Cornell University, Eric Sanderson, Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (and author of the book Mannahatta: a Natural History of New York City) and other local environmentalists and ecologists before choosing the specific sites to collect material to make the drawings. Fossil samples from late Cretaceous in Staten Island (dinosaurs); a mastodon from the Pleistocene at 141st Street and Broadway; Beaver from soil from the Harlem River (an incredibly rich fresh water ecosystem); Turtle Pond in Central Park (home to 5 species of turtles); the beach at Coney Island where Sand Tiger Sharks are captured for the world’s aquariums and Hal the coyote who was captured in 2006 in Central Park.
An illustrated catalog with an essay by Jonathan Lethem will accompany the exhibition.
Alexis Rockman: Bioluminescence
April 1 - 30, 2016
Carolina Nitsch Project Room
534 W 22nd St, New York, NY 10011
Carolina Nitsch is pleased to announce the gallery’s first exhibition with NY based artist Alexis Rockman, entitled Bioluminescence, featuring a series of twenty recent works on paper.
This project visualizes deep sea creatures and also imagines their interactions within the ocean’s ecosystem. Painted with gouache on black paper, these works developed out of Rockman’s visual concept art for the film “Life of Pi,” which has been featured at the Drawing Center in New York and the New Orleans Museum of Art. They relate stylistically and technically to his watercolors and field drawings, which are extremely fluid and appear to have been painted quickly like calligraphy, yet stand alone as highly substantial in their own right. While the field drawings often incorporate soil and other found materials, the Bioluminescence series captures the fluidity and fleetingness of these deep sea creatures, allowing the lighter gouache to bloom and create the glowing images against the black paper.
Fully illustrated exhibition catalog published by Carolina Nitsch available.
Alexis Rockman Bridges the Gulf Between Art and Science
Claudia Dreifus
A CONVERSATION WITH
The New York Times
April 18, 2016
In 1959, the British writer C.P. Snow complained that scientists and artists lived in “two cultures” and that the gulf between them was one of “mutual incomprehension.” The painter Alexis Rockman has built a successful career out of bridging that divide. His paintings and murals on scientific themes — climate change, species extinction, evolutionary theory, geology — have hung at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. We spoke for two hours at the 53-year-old artist’s studio in the TriBeCa district of New York.
Alexis Rockman Featured on "The Artist Project"
Season 4
The Met Museum
Alexis Rockman is featured on Season 4 of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's The Artist Project, a documentary series that details what artists see when they look at The Met.
Rockman's segment focuses on Martin Johnson Heade's Hummingbird and Passionflowers, and discuss the duality of the artist's romantic as well as scientifically accurate tendencies. Rockman explores the importance of finding and highlighting the sublime in the natural world.
https://youtu.be/1PnGRAuGi1E
