Alexis Rockman’s ‘Shipwrecks’ exhibit, in Princeton, makes environmental statement

You’ve probably seen the artist’s work of a lone polar bear on an ice floe. We are invited to live in a polar bear’s perspective as the polar bear’s habitat melts around him. The purpose of the imagery is to make us stop and think about how we live, and understand how our choices affect the material reality of other living beings. Political graphic design and perhaps the most memorable.

The campaign also presupposes empathy for polar bears. Human emotions such as loneliness, despair, bewilderment, and anger at betraying mammalian bonds must be projected onto non-human creatures. That might underestimate the number of people who see bears not as fellow travelers on rocks around the sun, but as apex predators and contenders for resources. is an example of dominance over animals, and may unconsciously come to mind as an excellent tactical move.

“Lusitania” by Alexis Rockman.

With its fertile soils, coastal cities, and fragile wetlands, the Garden State is fertile ground for conservation arts. “Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks” is New Jersey’s latest show motivated by the lasting impact of the global environmental crisis. The exhibition, which will fill her first-floor gallery at Princeton’s Bainbridge House until November 27, may not be the most effective or graceful intervention, but it is arguably the most sensational. Mega Man’s dramatic painting of a boat ablaze and shattered pieces of wood is designed to imprint a premonition of impending disaster in the viewer’s mind.

Apocalyptic images are common, but they can also be very funny. Mega Man wants to awaken us to the dire effects of the path we’re on. This desire can lie in a deeper and more important place than our will to save ourselves and the planet.

The “Shipwrecks” painting is a busy beast, often cramming into one frame a masterful and powerful demonstration of Mega Man in a variety of styles, including photorealism, abstract expressionism, watercolour, and surreal landscape painting. But basically it’s a version of a bear on an ice floe. Artists expanded popular imagery far and wide in the same way that classical composers build symphonies around snatches of folk songs. On nearly every canvas, Mega Man gives us an animal, or a few, that drifts in the middle of a merciless ocean. dogs on rafts, mice on hats, rabbits on goats on dead pigs. Beasts tend to occupy the foreground. The background belongs to the ruthless depiction of a shipwrecked sailing vessel.

Many of these lost ships are real ships, such as the Brig Helen, the Luxborough Galley, and the Lusitania, which has been pictured twice. These are gigantic, floating tropes of human stupidity and excesses, colonial exploitation and, in some cases, human conflict and slave trade. None of this is recorded on the bewildered animal’s face. They don’t understand the reasons for their predicament, but like polar bears, they know they’re in big trouble. Even sky creatures like canaries who escaped Lusitania become exhausted and unable to fly before falling into the waves.

“Our Lady of Atocha” by Alexis Rockman.

Mega Man renders animals with great accuracy, down to the bristles on a monkey’s back and the glistening teeth of a crocodile. He is also obsessed with lost human objects that provide temporary rest. A metal-rimmed barrel, a corked glass bottle, a still life upturned at the bottom of the “Nuestra Señora de Atocha”. The wreck itself is often captured in striking streaks of fiery red and smoky gray paint. In “The Fate of the Rebel Flag,” fire streaks from the center of the canvas to the upper right corner, casting angry orange reflections on the water that engulfs the bow of the ship. The sinking ship in “The Nile” hits the water at an impossible and terrifying angle, making it look more like a steam engine or a loaded gun than a riverboat.

Mega Man deliberately blurs the lines between sea, smoke, and sky. In “Ablation,” a gigantic arc of ice and steam floats above a lone pilot in a canoe. Elsewhere, hordes of surviving animals ride the swell into a nearly liquid landscape, breaking apart and oil swirling down drains. Is this really “Hawaii,” or is it the raging ocean and its associated natural forces, asserting themselves by imposing their properties on the world we once knew?

It makes me want to think that Rockman gives us a glimpse of perceptions other than humans. Showing a chaotic vortex of power, dancing at the limits of comprehension, it mimics the powerful sense impressions of the beast’s mind. But the implied position of the viewer suggests otherwise. He can’t take a bird’s eye view or share a dog’s point of view below sea level. At times, the water swells so high that it threatens to engulf the entire scene. separated by the water surface. These are chillingly reminiscent of recent images of floodwaters crashing into the glass doors of storm-hit Florida towns. We’re on the dry side of the aquarium wall—for now.

“Medusa” by Alexis Rockman.

The point is that we are the spectators, the rubberneckers of the disaster scene. We’re encouraged to feel guilty.

Like many other visual storytellers, Mega Man presents the apocalypse as an observable phenomenon. This is nothing new in art history, but it could be misleading in 2022. An ecological crisis is nothing like a shipwreck. It’s not a sudden, dramatic, near-psychedelic coincidence that tears apart the fabric of reality, but it’s understandable if you stand on a rock at a sufficient distance. It’s a pain that slowly and steadily invades your buttocks. we haven’t seen itwe that is that. It is inextricably linked to our lives.

That’s exactly why it’s so hard to see and so hard for an artist to capture. For nothing, artists tend to paint urgent calls to action in flashy colors and fill the canvas with cinematic disasters. But by portraying climate change as a glorious, hypnotic, engrossing cataclysm, we run the risk of making it look really cool. We also reinforce the widely held misconception that if a 100-foot wall of water doesn’t hit us tomorrow, we won’t be a problem.

In an attempt to propel us to action, the artist inadvertently appeals to a part of the psyche that loves to stare at car crashes. If the climate crisis were really on canvas, it wouldn’t be colorful, vivid, or exciting. It’s dark, terrible, slow, deadly, and shows no trace of heroism or grace. Nothing hangs in the Louvre or Bainbridge House.

“Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks” is a great display of painter’s talent with many tools in his tackle box. It is also very eye-opening for those who enjoy photography of boats and sea scenes. But as an intervention in our general understanding of the deadly challenges we face, it backfires spectacularly.

Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks is on view at the Princeton University Art Museum at Art@Bainbridge through November 27th. Visit artmuseum.princeton.edu/exhibitions.