Rockman has been making imagined versions of the natural world and its gradual degradation for more than thirty-five years. Unlike the works in this show, his paintings are often sharply detailed and epic in scale and frequently merge the dark comedy of Hieronymus Bosch with the exquisite tenderness of a John James Audubon rendering. The artist’s water-based media react with one another and the paper to create blooming, otherworldly compositions cloaked in luminous mists and liquid shadows—each picture seemingly touched by acid rain. And even though his fable-like cautionary tales, strewn with symbolism and humor, are executed more loosely here, they remain, as usual, monstrously potent. Indeed, we’re unable to avert our eyes from Rockman’s nightmares, as he makes our creeping ruination so terribly entrancing.
