For sheer beauty, no other current Chelsea show can beat Alexis Rockman’s watercolor and acrylic landscape paintings, part of his exhibition at Jack Shainman Gallery. Attracted by washes of bright watercolor and acrylic, visitors are drawn into environments around the world that have experienced climate change-related fires or agricultural burns. Oil and cold wax paintings in the main gallery juxtapose towering, burning landscapes with diminutive humans in boats on rivers in the foreground, helpless witnesses to the devastation. A final gallery of ‘field drawings’ from the Great Lakes region were created from a kind of paint made with local materials – sand from the lakes or coal dust from a power plant – which he used to picture local fish, birds and more. Part elegy at what is being lost, part appreciation of the beauty that remains, Rockman’s new work is a powerful reminder of the fragility of nature. (On view in Chelsea through Feb 28th.)
