Experience at Wexner Center with Connotations and Denotations

     While visiting the Wexner Center I found myself spending more time studying Alexis Rockman's work than anything else. In the exhibit, A Fable for Tomorrow, it was not only the size of the work that I found interesting but his ideas.






     The piece titled The Farm, made with oil and acrylic on wood, shows different animals in different points of time as humans began to bio-engineer them. The last version of the cow is an enlarged version of the one today with a square body and with an abnormal amount of nipples. The chicken appears to be featherless and has 3 sets of wings. The pig is enlarged to a point where there is so much excess flesh that it is hanging off towards the ground. The pig also has a kidney, a set of lungs, and a heart painted on the side. The last animal is a mouse. The mouse has gone from brown fur to pink skin and now dawns an ear on its back. The last versions of these animals seem a bit farfetched but not out of the realm of possibility. Animals and plants are constantly bio-engineered for better yield. In the case of the cow, we need more meat so the cow is bigger. We get our milk from the cow so there are more nipples to provide more milk. People like to eat chicken and by increasing the number of wings on a chicken you are getting more from one animal. The plants in this piece are also altered. The tomatoes are shaped like pies and the watermelon is rectangular. When reading more about the piece I learned that the background, a soybean field, was chosen because soybeans are one of the most genetically modified crops in the U.S. By combining real instances of genetic modification, a human ear on a mouse and soybeans, with imagined modifications, cow and watermelon, the piece becomes more real. Rockman's big idea comes through as concern for what the future will look like and questions the ethics of toying with genetics.

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     The second piece that caught my eye was titled Biosphere: Hydrographers Canyon. This piece was also done on oil on wood; it shows a various forms of sea life. There are some animals that look like fish, jelly fish, crabs, and even worms. There are some other animals that are not so easily recognized. Many of the animals do not have a lot of color. This could mean that they live in deeper parts of the ocean. In the background there is a light colored spiral that contrasts the rest of the black background. Though out the painting there are also white circles of different sizes. The circles are bubbles rising to the surface of the water. The light colored spiral could be some light source at the surface of the water, like a boat or moon. Hydrography is when the oceans are charted for depth, tides and currents. This reminds me that people often say the ocean hasn't been fully explored. With some of the animals being more difficult to identify, Rockman could be saying that there are many more animals that we do not yet know about.