Exhibitions
Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow
Special exhibition galleries, 3rd floor North, American Art Museum
November 19, 2010 – May 8, 2011
Alexis Rockman, The Pelican, 2006, oil on wood, 56 x 44 in., Courtesy of the artist and Waqas Wajahat, New York
Alexis Rockman (b. 1962) has been depicting the natural world with virtuosity and wit for more than two decades. His extensive body of work combines art history, science, and popular culture to address a wide range of subjects from evolutionary biology and genetic engineering to deforestation and global climate change. Each exquisitely rendered painting is an amalgam of historical research, scientific observation and unbridled imagination. Rockman's sources include botanical illustrations, museum dioramas, nineteenth-century landscape painting, science fiction films, and firsthand field study. From these diverse explorations, he has built a universe of species and scenarios that confound basic perceptions of the living world. His vivid images transport the viewer to a place that is at once bountiful and besieged, where long-extinct creatures inhabit the ruins of modern monuments and household pets drift among the cosmos. This ability to straddle the boundary between empirical fact and plausible fiction has garnered the attention of scientists and art critics alike.
Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow is the first major survey of the artist's work and will feature approximately 80 paintings and works on paper from private and public collections. The exhibition will trace Rockman's artistic development from the mid-1980s to the present. The exhibition is being organized by Joanna Marsh, The James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art.
National Tour
Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow is available for tour to other venues in 2011 and 2012. If you are interested in hosting the exhibition at your museum, please visit our traveling exhibitions page for contact information.
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