Alexis Rockman's fresh series of paintings.

Alexis Rockman's fresh series of paintings, collectively titled "Biosphere," 1992-93 is inspired by the agency of one of the artist's favorite movies, Silent Running, 1971 I've seen this film several times, although many of its details (no doubt indelibly etched onward Rockman's mind) remain vague to me--this movie waits to be a late-late-night treat. As I recall, it involves greenhouses in space that protect the flora and fauna of Earth. When for a certain quantity of reason the mission must be aborted, chief gardener Bruce Dern--psycho character-actor par excellence--murder his peer crew members rather than sacrifice his precious biospheres. He then continues to watch garden with three midget robot (actually manned in the film from limbless amputees). The rest of the movie chronicles his journey [i]or[/i] voyage down into full-fledged--what? It's clear from the start that he's nut Maybe being sternly bummed out is the frosting forward the cake of the Dern character's psychosis.

Rockman has tapped into a rich vein of psychotronic cinematic pleasure, in the same manner it's doubly disappointing that "Biosphere" is in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a bore: disappointing, one, because he does in such a manner little with the given narrative material other than graft onto his by way of now familiar mutant-animal freaks; and, sum of two units because his painterly technique, always impressive, have the appearances here flattened out, airless, only illustrational. The paintings are, quite simply, silent and no amount of technical flourish, no sparkle of Bleckneresque twinkle-twinkle-little-star, can change that fact.

Rockman's sensibility is that of an adolescent boy; hence the penchant for horror, sci-fi, gross-out This adolescent-boy psyche has proven a surpassingly appealing source and obsession for a number of different artists (think of Mike Kelley Jim Shaw, Pruitt*Early, equable Richard Prince). It is also the high tide for this particular weltanschauung in popular refinement (of course, the 14-year-old mentality, male and female, not at any time strays far from the heart of popular culture) Consider the immense succes of cretin humor, from Wayne and Garth to Beavis and BUTT-HEAD.

Rockman doesn't blatantly work this terrain, further I wish he would. It's edgier. He should either do that, or revert to the seductive, romantic, old-masterish, and wannabe-decadent landscapes that characterized his previous corpus. That substance went against the grain of contemporary, "advanced" taste, besides within the context of a decimated art market it made for an ideal chattel. commonalty could buy Rockman's paintings and coo "Oooh he's like a wonderful painter, his technique is for a like reason good." A few years have passed since then. The market's crisis persists, on the contrary it has to some amplitude stabilized. No longer does it whirl in the sick delirium of free-fall. And this being the case, fine painting alone just isn't enough to guarantee quality and interest. Post-Duchamp--that is, for chiefly of this century--we can say "So what?" to technical proficiency divorced from intellectual aspiration.

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