Alexis Rockman, Drainage Ditch: Georgetown, Guana, 1995, oil on wood, 60 × 100 inches. Courtesy of Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York.
Alexis Rockman, Untitled Mud Drawings, 1994, a combination of sewage, soil, and polymer, 4⅛ × 5¾ inches. Courtesy of Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York.
Alexis Rockman, Untitled Mud Drawings, 1994, a combination of sewage, soil, and polymer, 4⅛ × 5¾ inches. Courtesy of Jay Gorney Modern Art, New York.
Yunes were human once. / They nursed babies and baked bread and made love beneath the shade of the willow tree. / Then they were drowned in the bog on the edge of town. / The marshlands kept them flawless. / Their skin tanned tight as a drum skin, sealing their spirits inside like caged dogs.
Vast plates shifted littler ones / with constant sounds and heat terrible / Then there was a cleft and so a river
“A precisely aimed reach into the immeasurable flow of things.”
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Frances McDormand, A.M. Homes, Padgett Powell, Tina Girouard, William Pope. L, Butch Morris, Malcolm Morley, Jafar Panahi, and John Elderfield.
Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it.
Kara Walker
