Alexis Rockman: The Weight of Air

Disturbingly majestic hurricanes, wind-energy fields, tornadoes, landslides, waterspouts, melting glaciers, forest fires and newly mutant species are some of the subjects of Alexis Rockman's deeply hued and intricately crafted works on paper. Surreal and deeply critical of man's destructive relationship to the environment, the primary works collected in this volume, published to accompany Rockman's first major large-scale museum exhibition in the United States, were all made since 2005. With echoes of J.M.W. Turner, Winslow Homer, Charles Burchfield and Rockman's own inimitable realism, the works surge with a power and flow of color that announces a new direction for this remarkable artist, who has been praised as much for his figurative exactitude as for his wildly imaginative take on what is considered the real. Essays are by the Rose Art Museum's Michael Rush and the Harvard University Art Museums' Helen Molesworth; the artist interview is by Brett Littman of The Drawing Center in New York.