Alexis Rockman: The Toxic Sublime

About

Magenta Plains is pleased to present The Toxic Sublime, a solo exhibition of new watercolors by Alexis Rockman. These watercolors are conceived from unexpected perspectives, collapsing the boundary between the viewer and the world we inhabit. Examining the euphoria, psychedelia, and enchantment of experiencing nature, these works encourage the viewer to set aside fatalism in favor of an energetic defense of the environment. 

The works featured in The Toxic Sublime hew to Rockman’s career-long interest in biology and ecology, with a naturalist's eye for detail. However unlike much of his previous work, here the human element is conspicuously absent. Instead, moments of wonder typically unseen by human beings are captured; a migration of monarch butterflies seen from the forest floor, soldier ants in conflict with a fly on a branch, or the gentle opening of a poppy’s petals. The careful attention and care for these moments from Rockman is clear in his thoughtful execution, however the studied realism of his past work in oil paint is exchanged here for a much more abstracted, almost hallucinatory quality in these images. One gets the sense that the viewer is not supposed to imagine these moments as observed experiences, but instead as almost dreamlike phenomena, representations of an ideal natural world separate from the empirical human experience.

The Toxic Sublime is an expansion of Rockman’s ongoing project to use the tools of fine art to draw attention to human degradation of our natural world. However, as opposed to crafting a forwardlooking dystopian warning, Rockman uses these watercolors as an opportunity to meditate on the perception of wonder and beauty inherent to our Earth. In his hands, these glimpses seem almost alien, a world onto their own.