In the wing and Opatrny Galleries, Floor 2L
This series of seven new monumental landscape paintings by artist and environmental activist Alexis Rockman (born 1962) presents the expansive ecological history of—and speculates on a possible future for—the port city of Naples, Italy. Using Naples as a template for other coastal cities, the series begins in the Mesozoic era and moves through such potent episodes as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the spread of the Bubonic Plague. Following an imagined destruction caused by overfishing and rising sea levels, the series culminates in a world without people: a whale cresting out of the water, towering over the ruins of a palazzo by the sea. The exhibition will also include a group of drawings created with lava, molten rock, and ash from Mount Vesuvius.
This exhibition was curated by Andrea Inselmann, the Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and supported in part by the Ames Exhibition Endowment and the Jan Abrams Exhibition Endowment.