Darwin's Nightmare

Gary Tatintsian Gallery hosts an Alexis Rockman exhibition

The future is Alexis Rockman's only goal. He rushed there straight from the prehistoric past, about which he knows, if not everything, then a lot. Fossil enthusiast and modern animation specialist specializes in wild futuristic fantasies with an emphasis on evolution. Which he did not master from textbooks: Rockman spent his childhood with his mother at work - at the Museum of Natural History of New York and at excavations in different parts of the world. Drawing a straight line from the past to the future, from fossils to cheerful horror films, turned out to be a matter of technology. Moreover, the wonderful achievements of modern civilization such as genetically modified foods, cloning, global warming, nuclear experiments and the man-made disasters accompanying all this magnificence promise humanity a lot of new and interesting things. Where others see endless horror and global cataclysms, the artist discovers an invaluable source for violent fantasies. Which he embodies, without becoming despondent, with the help of the knowledge of video and animation acquired at the school of visual arts. At the same time, he does not forget to enrich himself once again with rare treasures created by nature itself - in Moscow, with extraordinary joy, the artist visited the Zoological Museum on Nikitskaya Street.

In our difficult, environmentally concerned times, such art cannot but enjoy success. Alexis Rockman is a relatively young and very promising artist, smoothly moving from the gallery to the museum level. Tatintsyan’s gallery specializes in these, bringing the latest new items and rising stars to Moscow. The curators of the Guggenheim and MOMA are already including Rockman’s works in their exhibitions. Bright paintings, layered plastic compositions, three-dimensional dioramas. In his collages he includes “real” objects, materials, insects: furs, flies, fossils, pieces of horse harness appear among carefully made decoys, starting the well-known game of “try to tell the difference.” An amusing mishmash, cheerful nonsense, masterfully performed, is decorated with numerous self-portraits of Rockman, the protagonist of many of his own works. Just not those where he develops the theme of risky genetic experiments, crossing cute animals in the most bizarre combinations and demonstrating evolutionary series, next to which the three-tailed rat from a fairy tale will seem like a touching pet. While portraying monsters, Rockman maintains an incredibly politically correct physiognomy - as if aggression and fear have disappeared from his version of the future forever. He doesn’t show any unpleasant people or “strangers” - only his own: it’s not scary that the rat will gradually turn into something like a kangaroo, but the donkey will have the opportunity to use prosthetics, and our descendants with a different number of limbs will become more comfortable playing ball. Evolution continues like an endless highway in one of Rockman's works, like a game of possibilities, a fun puzzle with many moves and unpredictable results. At the crossroads of the past and the future, everything is possible, so Rockman judges his heroes like God the turtle and various other sufferers for their spectacular forms and freedom of creativity.

Rockman arrived in Moscow at a hot time - his exhibition opened during Art Moscow, when domestic collectors again demonstrated boundless patriotism, paying very little attention to spectacular foreign artists. The joy for the domestic market of contemporary art did not stop one from being surprised - just a century ago, Russian soil gave birth to quick-witted collectors who quickly responded with very decent sums to the work of innovators, regardless of their nationality. The Tatintsyan Gallery, the only one in Moscow specializing in young Western art, offers a young, unfamiliar tribe, while at the same time replacing a museum of contemporary art that does not exist in practice.

Faina BALAKHOVSKAYA