A second piece I saw at the Wexner that interested me enough to write a blog about was titled Sea World and was created by Alexis Rockman. It is a painting he made in 2004.
When I first looked at the piece my eyes went to the girl that is feeding the weird looking whale mixed with something else. Then I looked at the beach ball in the top of the screen and the other trainer that is on top of one of the other sea animals. It took me a second to notice that there were abnormal features in the picture.
The denotations of the painting are that it looks like a sea world type setting with a large pool of water with animals in the tank that do not exist in real life. The animals seem to be cross-breeded species, but the humans in the picture look normal.
The connotations come from understanding why the artist chose to make the animals look like cross-species. From reading about the artist I gathered that he is interested in humankind’s manipulation of species and genetic engineering.
Rockman’s big idea was showing his concerns for how our future may look on earth. Several of his other paintings also showed half naturist entities, and half worldly entities. What I mean by worldly entities are things that we see everyday that are manmade; things like litter, and objects that destroy nature (an airplane engine killing birds was painted in another art piece). Rockman showed the clash in his paintings of how nature and manmade objects fit together.
Very nice work Gloria. Maybe I will see you around the Wex more?
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