ALEXIS ROCKMAN’S LATEST EXHIBIT PORTRAYS APSYCHEDELIC, POSTHUMAN NATURAL WORLD WHERE OUR FAILINGS HORRIFY BUT ULTIMATELY INSPIRE US.

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CLICK FOR SLIDESHOW Blow Flies by Alexis Rockman. Courtesy Nyehaus

Alexis Rockman’s latest exhibit Half-life, up at New York City’s Nyehaus gallery through April 18, is a perverse kind of escape hatch for dark times. Lose yourself here for an afternoon and you’ll experience a happy, hallucinatory netherworld where the natural and the nonhuman persevere despite or perhaps because of the missteps of humanity. Of course, any kind of optimistic takeaway is probably accidental. Rockman is best known for his 2004 mural at the Brooklyn Museum, Manifest Destiny, which painstakingly depicts how global warming will capsize Manhattan and destroy civilization within 300 years. Rockman is eternally cynical about humanity; he sees his role as an artist as providing dark but beautiful reminders that we’re bound by a biological contract. Break the laws of nature, and we suffer, a Rockman painting says. As he told us in a 2004Salon with Neil deGrasse Tyson: “I guess I’m interested in bad news. That’s my role, because no one else was willing to do it.”

But Half-Life seems more ambiguously apocalyptic than Rockman’s previous work. The paintings, all gargantuan, wall-eating expanses, riff on the work of Morris Louis, a famous abstract expressionist whose canvases of rainbows and rectangles of color were, to many, the apotheosis of the free-thinking spirit of the West during the Cold War. Over Louis’s rainbows and rectangles, Rockman has laid his trademark, hyper-detailed biological forms — Adelie penguins, mosquitoes, mutant Gerber daisies, ants, rabbits. The two layers — the often-distorted natural world against wild streaks of color  — suggest the hope of modern society and its ultimate failings. But neither side of the relationship seems to dominate. Abstract painting glorified “modernism, technology, and capitalism,” Rockman explains, but “obviously there’s a toxic, dark side to that.”

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The Sleep of Reason
Bruce Sterling on Rockman’s Half-life.

Seed Salon: Alexis Rockman + Neil deGrasse Tyson
The artist and astrophysicist in conversation.

In Gerbera Daisies, a rabbit and a flower draped in streams of yellow and hunter green is first ingested as transcendentally sunny, but a closer look at the canvas reveals that the bunny has three ears and the flower is not quite right. “In my mind, that had to do with mutation and pesticides,” says Rockman. “The idea of the perfect lawn.” Although the painting seems fundamentally critical of biotechnology, Rockman says that he believes that we’re biologically driven to strive for the perfect lawn because it reminds us of the savannahs we evolved on. Half-life suggests that we should embrace our good intentions while staring their mutant byproducts square in the face.

Design pioneer, neo-futurist, and novelist Bruce Sterling reflects on Half-life’s tug-of-war between human hope and failure in The Sleep of Reason, an essay the gallery commissioned to accompany the exhibit. In it, Sterling portrays Rockman as an alligator at a watering hole. “Though he is known for the searing clarity of his paintings, there are things below the waterline that he does not paint,” Sterling writes. “He decided, as an act of deliberate will, to maintain his amphibious ambiguity. An ambiguity about the boundary of man and animal. An ambiguity about the borders of nature and artifice. Of art, of science.”

Rockman started this series two years ago, before the current economic crisis. So while the work has an uncanny timeliness to it, it’s almost as if he had the foresight to know this moment would not call for another Manifest Destiny — or any other detailed illustration of our failings. Half-life has just enough of the good stuff, enough reminders of the beauty and hope of humanity to hang a life raft on.

SABELLA KIRKLAND’S LIFE-SIZE PAINTINGS OF EXOTIC, RECENTLY DISCOVERED SPECIES CAPTURE A WORLD CAUGHT BETWEEN THE JOYS OF DISCOVERY AND THE THREAT OF IMMINENT LOSS.

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CLICK TO ENLARGE. NOVA: Understory. Credit: Isabella Kirkland

Throughout my career in biology, I’ve often cited the Australian gastric brooding frog as a marvel of evolutionary adaptation: The mother frog swallows her eggs, develops her tadpoles in her stomach, and regurgitates them at maturity. Discovered in the 1970s, this bizarre frog was unable to adapt to changes in its environment and was known to science for barely a decade before becoming extinct.

Artist Isabella Kirkland’s meticulous oil paintings revisit this bittersweet tension between discovery and loss. Each life-size panel in her ongoing NOVA series includes dozens of species, from mammals and birds to insects and plants, all of which have been discovered by science in the past 20 years. NOVA: Understory (2007) depicts a sunlit paradise filled with 58 of these exotic new species, from the Panay cloudrunner to the sharp-snouted bush frog of Borneo, all reflected in a detailed taxonomic key. Understory is a celebration of biodiversity and a tribute to the enlightening power of science, but there’s a snake in the garden. Several continents’ worth of species appear crammed together, predators beside prey, ominously evoking the untenable concentration of species into dwindling islands of habitat. Kirkland’s previous series, TAXA, memorialized species endangered or driven to extinction by human activities. Understory prompts us to ask, will these species be next?

In many regards, the message of Understory is reminiscent of 17th- and 18th-century cabinets of curiosities, rooms in which European collectors gathered rare and newly discovered specimens, arranging them in beautiful tableaux. Cabinets of curiosities demonstrated the wealth and power of their noble patrons and the successful imposition of taxonomic order on nature, and they served as tools for teaching and study. Just as curiosity cabinets were organized in idiosyncratic but logical ways that reflected the worldviews of their creators, Kirkland’s NOVA series groups together species from diverse geographic regions by habitat in order to emphasize their shared ecological plight. The branching tree at the heart of Understory, which resembles a phylogenetic tree or cladogram, reiterates the themes of order and commonality. And like the naturalists and collectors who filled the original curiosity cabinets hundreds of years ago, Kirkland, a former taxidermist, also traveled the world to study and sketch her subjects.

Understory also has much in common with the Renaissance-era Wunderkammern, or wonder cabinets, which predate curiosity cabinets and emphasized awe over taxonomy and logic. The viewer is delighted with sumptuous visual elements like shafts of stunning golden light, graceful birds and butterflies, and countless hidden treasures, including a suntiger tarantula, a green pit viper camouflaged by leaves, and a tiny Peruvian bird called Lulu’s Body-Tyrant. If these beautiful species have all just been found, the painting makes us eager to know what wonders we are yet to find.

So what is the lesson of Understory? Is it a wonder cabinet, bearing witness to the marvels of nature, or a curiosity cabinet, glorifying logical order and the power of science? Perhaps it transcends both. Biological specimens inevitably decay and fade; art, on the other hand, can preserve not just the body in stunning detail, but also the spirit, grace, and emotional impact of biological forms. The birds in Kirkland’s painting, for example, will remain vital, eyes sparkling and plumage unfaded, when their living prototypes are long extinct. And unlike cabinets of wonder or curiosity, art has the potential to make nature’s rarities accessible to a wider public.

By marrying biology and artistry, Understory conveys the reality of extinction in a way that may drive us to care if it might not already be too late. To paraphrase the poet W.B. Yeats in “Sailing to Byzantium,” Understory sings to us of what is past, and passing, and to come. It represents a moment that is likely to be brief: a moment when the euphoria of scientific discovery still outweighs the losses driven by our unrepentantly techno-optimistic culture. Can paintings like Kirkland’s motivate us toward change as extinctions accelerate? Or will Understory turn out to be a trophy of shame  — a memorial to foreseen losses that might have been avoided? — Jessica Palmer is a biologist and artist. She blogs at Bioephemera for ScienceBlogs.

N CREATING HER NEW SERIES, PAREIDOLIA, ARTIST AND CHEMIST VESNA JOVANOVIC DETECTED BIOMORPHIC AND MEDICAL FORMS IN BLOTS OF INK.

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New Mitosis; Vesna Jovanovic, 2009

I spent my formative years in the Mediterranean, where I was surrounded by unusual plants, insects, sea creatures, and rock formations. As an inherently curious and creative person, I began drawing and painting, as well as pressing leaves, collecting seashells, and storing various pods and seeds in jars. In addition to my established interest in pursuing art as a career, I eventually became seriously intrigued by science, particularly chemistry, and went on to pursue a double degree in art and chemistry as an undergraduate at Loyola University Chicago.

Art and science are generally considered very separate today; they have very different connotations, even stereotypes associated with them. Yet I find that my interest in these two fields stems from the same place: a deep curiosity about the world and the human position within it. Ironically, one of my biggest frustrations as an art student was the accuracy and precision that I could not let go of. I wanted to work more from the imagination, to leave some things to chance; I wanted to create opportunities for unpredictability and serendipity—for numerous “happy accidents.”

In 2002, I enrolled in an advanced drawing course at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This course took me in the direction that eventually led to the series of drawings that I am working on today. One of the assignments was to create an inkblot and then use it as a guide for drawing. Initially, I struggled with the imagery. I tried projecting landscapes, human figures, animals…but they all seemed forced. One day something materialized more unaffectedly and effortlessly. In the curved streams of spilled ink, I began to see flasks and rubber tubing.

I continued developing these drawings beyond my time at SAIC. I began experimenting with various types of papers and inks and a range of new methods of applying ink to paper (spilling, sponging, blotting, and even masking certain areas and then spilling more ink over them). As my drawings developed, my glassware and tubing began turning into veins, intestines, and neurons. This probably happened as a result of the organic nature of the ink; the curved lines and streams were becoming increasingly reminiscent of biomorphic forms. I eventually titled the series Pareidolia, a term used to describe the psychological phenomenon of recognizing specific, identifiable forms in otherwise random stimuli. Common examples of pareidolia are the recognition of animals in clouds or faces in wood grain, and it is the basis of the Rorschach test, the series of inkblots used by psychologists to gain insight into a patient’s mental state.

One of my more recent pieces, “New Mitosis,” [Shown Above] began as a spill of diluted black ink on the left side of a large (66cm x 101cm) sheet of watercolor paper, which I folded along the vertical axis to blot the ink and then pipetted six droplets of my favorite brown ink on top. The ink seemed to come from a batch with a factory defect: It looked more red than brown, had lumps of some sort of precipitate, separated into two liquids, and acted quite unpredictably when combined with other media (branching out, spilling unevenly, streaming in unexpected directions). If I had come across this ink before I began working on the Pareidolia series, I probably would have dumped the ink and bought a new bottle. But with time and experience I have learned the value of pausing to consider, at least for a quick moment, if anything could benefit from what appears to be a problem or mistake. I believe that it is these moments of apparent setbacks that are actually some of the most valuable in both art and science. They break the normal flow of events, introducing a junction that can lead to greater, more significant discoveries.

Once the ink dried, the translucent gray tone reminded me of glass, metal, and smoke. I began drawing imaginary devices with ball bearings, glass bulbs, and cables, choosing to leave the red droplets unresolved. The symmetrical nature of the inkblot gave the finished drawing the look of being stretched and split across the center of the paper. I also noticed that the untouched red spots obscured the scale of the image. Despite the glassware and tubing around them, the red spots suggested a microscopic scale, specifically a group of cells. This combination is what ultimately led to the title for the piece, “New Mitosis.” I imagined this scenario as a set of cells splitting with the help or intervention of some strange, mysterious equipment, and the piece began to inadvertently evoke questions about biotechnology and genetic research.

Science in our society is a key source of information about the world—conversely a source of awe, admiration, and fear (the way religion once was). Pareidolia conveys both the curiosity and fear that are often associated with scientific research; the chaos of spilled ink is seen in contrast with the detailed and calculated, yet absurd configurations of tubing and glassware drawn on top of it. In a sense, I have created my own Rorschach test—one that that had tapped into my deep-rooted attraction to the chemistry lab, both visually and conceptually. Ultimately, I find that science and art are complementary to each other and equally important in social significance and function. Science strives to provide answers about the world, while art strives to inspire questions.

N THE GARDEN

Restoring Manhattan as It Once Was

Illustrations courtesy of Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden

From left, interrupted fern, wild columbine and bloodroot.

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By ANNE RAVER

Published: September 2, 2009

IN 1609, when the English explorer Henry Hudson sailed the river that would be named after him, he looked out on an island of hilly forest and wetlands teeming with wildlife.

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Times Topics: Gardens and Gardening

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Evan Sung for The New York Times

ROOTS George Reis checks out specimens planted at New York University as part of a project to reintroduce native plants that once thrived in Manhattan.

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Illustration courtesy of Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden

American beech.

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Illustration courtesy of Mertz Library, The New York Botanical Garden

Mayapple.

Four hundred years later, that paradise has been crushed by steel and concrete, with pockets of green made up mostly of exotic plants like Norway maples and English ivy.

But a patch of that lost landscape, so eloquently described by the Mannahatta Project (themannahattaproject.org), is evoked by a 2,200-square-foot native woodland garden being planted at Schwartz Plaza next to the Bobst Library on the New York University campus, just south of Washington Square.

There, beneath the lindens and Japanese pagoda trees, are sweeps of native ferns, columbine and wild ginger. Young beech seedlings are barely taller than the mayapples.

“We’re not trying to recreate a woodland, it’s a stylized version of a woodland,” said George Reis, N.Y.U.’s supervisor of sustainable landscapes, who became a gardener at the university in 1995. He knew nothing about gardening, but the job included free tuition. “I couldn’t identify English ivy,” he said. “I came to study Portuguese literature.”

Nevertheless, he took a few classes at the New York Botanical Garden. And one day he heard Darrel Morrison, a landscape architect renowned for his use of native plants, speak at Columbia University.

“It was all about making a design suited for a specific place,” said Mr. Reis, 42. “How can we evoke the natural history and even the social history of that place through design.”

He started changing a few areas around campus, replacing the English ivy and leggy boxwoods in front of the admissions building with native azaleas that bloomed at graduation, and filling the sunny expanse around the sports center with swamp mallows and sea oats.

The Mannahatta Project also inspired him to imagine Manhattan before the rest of the world landed here with its seeds and its culture. And when the class of 2008 put out a call for a worthy project for its $25,000 legacy gift, Mr. Reis submitted a proposal — for a native woodland garden designed by Mr. Morrison.

The idea won hand’s down over a proposal for plasma TV’s for the gym.

So this spring, Mr. Reis and Mr. Morrison, with the help of a small student crew, began planting 2,000 plants that were all thriving on Manhattan in the 17th century.

Beneath the lindens and a Japanese maple, sweeps of hay-scented ferns undulate against waves of New York ferns, interrupted ferns and Christmas ferns, each species planted en masse to accentuate subtle differences in shape, texture and color.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis), a shrub that once turned the Eastern woods white with its blossoms in early spring, signaling that it was safe to journey into the mountains to hold services for those who had died in the winter, will bloom next spring over wild columbine and bloodroot.

A handful of American beech seedlings, grown from local seed by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, on Staten Island, were only a foot tall. But those little trees are a sign that this urban native landscape is already taking hold.

Why not put a little Mannahatta in your own shady backyard, terrace or tiny front yard that faces the street? Columbine, wood phlox and wild geranium would do well in a small yard, in light to full shade, Mr. Morrison said, and would also work in large pots.

Bearberry, a low, rambling evergreen with pink or white flowers in the spring and red berries in summer, is a good ground cover for a sunny, sandy space. Partridge berry, another low-growing evergreen with red berries, prefers fertile soil and shade.

More Articles in Home & Garden »A version of this article appeared in print on September 3, 2009, on page D4 of the New York edition.