Alexis Rockman
Lake Athabasca, 2023
oil on wood
48 x 40 x 2 inches
text by Hank Manning
Fire pervades Alexis Rockman’s paintings, on view now at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. Fires burn down forests, pollute the atmosphere, and even rage through snowy environs. Small nascent flames feel more ominous than those that have left entire forests ashen, as we can easily foresee the death to come. Rockman portrays bodies of water in the foreground, as if he has retreated to the one place where fire can’t burn. These bodies reflect much of the devastation on land, as well as the exhibition’s title, Feedback Loop. They emphasize the accelerating nature of this destruction. The works’ titles—including Karaikal Beach (India), Lake Tanganyika (East Africa), Osa Peninsula (Costa Rica)—attest to a global reckoning that is pointedly addressed when viewing the series as a whole.
Alexis Rockman
Pioneers, 2017
oil and alkyd on wood
72 x 144 x 2 inches (overall)
Set almost entirely underwater, Pioneers is the only landscape in the show that is completely devoid of fire. It portrays the wide range of lifeforms, from cyanobacteria to a 20-foot sturgeon, found in the Great Lakes. The sun, shrouded by smoke in other paintings, rises in the center like a beacon of rebirth. It is there that the animals turn their gaze. As the largest work in the exhibition, this painting is a reminder of the continually rising sea levels driven by climate change. But this is not a silver lining of global warming for sea life. Even here, reminders of human impact proliferate. The painting, in fact, can be seen as a timeline of our impact on the environment. On the left, a mammoth skull sits by an ice shelf, highlighting the role that hunting played in their extinction during the last ice age. In the center, a sunken ship rests on the seabed. At right, a shopping cart has become the home of zebra mussels, and a still-afloat ship pollutes the sea with an immense green blob of ballast water.
Alexis Rockman
Rio Tigre, 2023
oil and cold wax on wood
48 x 40 x 2 inches
Human life, as opposed to its traces, is conspicuously scarce, visible only on close inspection. In a few paintings, nondescript solitary figures sit on small boats watching the destruction on land. In other paintings, similar boats appear unmanned. They are isolated and powerless in the face of fire. Like the similarly isolated moose, bees, and birds, the remaining people have become victims of our poor stewardship, leading to the loss of their natural habitat.
Alexis Rockman
Raccoon, 2017
sand from Cuyahoga River, Whiskey Island, and acrylic polymer on paper
12.75 x 16 x 1.5 inches (framed)
In the exhibition’s final room hang sixteen portraits of animals and plants found in the Great Lakes. Unlike the previous paintings, these minimalist drawings—made from sand, soil, or coal dust from the area—mostly contain only one figure, each rendered in an individual color. Without the context provided by the other works, they look like the types of anatomical sketches a biologist might draw and describe in a notebook. These species’ histories have been profoundly shaped by human activity. The horrifying, parasitic sea lamprey followed the Erie Canal after its construction in 1825 to the Great Lakes, where it has been an invasive menace ever since. During the late 19th century, North American wood ducks were introduced into Europe and Asia for their aesthetic appeal as ornamental waterfowl. Shortly after the turn of the century, raccoons were also brought to Europe as part of the growing fur trade. These invasive species rapidly cause disorder and death in their new ecosystems.
Alexis Rockman
Forest Floor, 1990
oil on wood
68 x 112 x 1.75 inches
Looping back to the beginning, we look again at Forest Floor, Rockman’s oldest painting on display, at the entrance. The worms, spiders, and other small beings (an ant dwarfed by an acorn provides a sense of scale) form an intricate ecosystem, somewhat camouflaged, but seemingly more full of life than the larger landscapes. Their size suggests vulnerability, while their diversity—the longer we look, the more we see—suggests both their importance to a natural balance and the strength that comes with numbers.
Rockman admits that while he has continued for decades to paint natural environments, with encyclopedic detail, his motivation has changed. In the 1980s and ’90s, he thought the general public had “an information deficit,” so his work must warn of what’s to come and demand change. Later, he resigned to the idea that “neither I nor my work were going to save the world.” We have entered a feedback loop, where desecration begets further desecration. If we cannot preserve the environment, at least we can remember its beauty through art.
Alexis Rockman: Feedback Loop is on view through February 28 at Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th Street, New York