Jon Kessler, Alexis Rockman, Rexy Tseng in Conversation

On the occasion of three simultaneous solo exhibitions by Jon Kessler, Alexis Rockman, and Rexy Tseng, please join us for a public discussion between these three artists on themes of climate, ecology, and imagined futures as we enter the Anthropocene.

Saturday, February 1, 4–6 PM
149 Canal Street, New York, NY 10002

RSVP

Jon Kessler

In Petrified, a selection of bronze and ceramic sculptures form a brand new, never-before exhibited body of work by Jon Kessler. The three freestanding works utilize upcycled bronze spills while incorporating materials as varied as scavenged metal, glazed clay, and German porcelain figurines. The result is a series of whimsical constructions that speak to contemporary anxieties around climate and ecology while simultaneously evoking an alternative world of wonder.

Jon Kessler has had numerous solo institutional exhibitions, such as The Web, Swiss Institute, New York, NY which traveled to Museum Tinguely, Basel, CH (2013); Sculptures from the 80s and 90s, Fisher Landau Center for Art, New York, NY (2010); the Drawing Center, New York, NY (2007); his first immersive installation, The Palace at 4 AM, exhibited at MoMA PS1, New York, NY, Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen, DK, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, DE and permanently installed at the Phoenix Kulturstiftung/Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, DE (2005); among many others.

Notable group exhibitions include L’Ennemi de Mon Ennemi, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FR (2018); Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today, ICA Boston, MA (2018); the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2017; 1985); 20/20, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2017); Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT (2014); and Contemplating the Void, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2010).

He is the recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts awards, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation award, a Foundation for the Performing Arts award, a St. Gaudens Memorial award, and a Creative Capital Grant. He is a Professor of Art at Columbia University where he has taught since 1994 and has lived and worked continuously in a former paint factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1980.

Alexis Rockman

Rendered in Alexis Rockman’s signature style of history painting, the seven oil on panel works in Naples: Course of Empire each display a stage in the life cycle of Naples, Italy and its relationship to the natural environment from the Cretaceous Period to a likely future post-climate disaster. Taking one of Europe’s greatest coastal cities as a site for the first time, Rockman provides an example for other shore-side towns at risk due to higher global temperatures. The exhibition will travel to Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples, Italy, to be on view in Spring 2025.

Born in New York City in 1962, Alexis Rockman is an artist and environmental activist who began making paintings and works on paper to build environmental awareness in the mid-1980s. Embarking on expeditions to distant locations like Antarctica and Madagascar in the company of professional naturalists, his work tells stories of natural histories confronting the challenging future we face of the biodiversity crisis, global warming, and genetic engineering.

Notable solo museum exhibitions include Alexis Rockman: Manifest Destiny at the Brooklyn Museum (2004), which traveled to the Wexner Center for the Arts (2004) and the Rhode Island School of Design (2005). In 2010, the Smithsonian American Art Museum organized Alexis Rockman: A Fable for Tomorrow, a major survey of his paintings and works on paper which toured to The Wexner Center for the Arts. In 2013, The Drawing Center mounted Drawings from Life of Pi, featuring the artist’s collaboration with Ang Lee on the award-winning film “Life of Pi” (2012). His series of 76 New Mexico Field Drawings was included in Future Shock at SITE Santa Fe (2017-18). Alexis Rockman: The Great Lakes Cycle, a major exhibition of large-scale paintings, watercolors and field drawings, toured the Midwest in 2018-20, opening at the Grand Rapids Art Museum and traveled to five other institutions in the Great Lakes region. Alexis Rockman: Shipwrecks, opened at the Peabody Essex Museum (2021) and traveled to Guild Hall (2021), Ackland Art Museum (2022), and Princeton University Art Museum (2022). In May 2023, The Mystic Seaport Museum presented Alexis Rockman: Oceanus, featuring ten large-scale watercolors and an 8-by-24-foot panoramic painting commissioned by the museum for their permanent collection. Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: A Journey to Nature’s Underworld was presented at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, CT in Summer 2023 and will travel to the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, The Tang Teaching Museum and other institutions through 2025. Naples: Course of Empire is Rockman’s second solo exhibition with Magenta Plains. He lives and works in Warren, Connecticut.

Rexy Tseng

As we witness another revolution with the rise of AI-generated imagery, Rexy Tseng's Mouthful of Dirty Copper offers a particularly timely reminder of the value of painting. Painting has survived successive revolutions in technological image-making, and its value has only grown with each one. From photography to television to digital media to social networks, each new wave of innovation has clarified painting's unique capacities: its embodiment of thought through material actions, its specific mechanisms of creating spatial complexity, density and ambiguity, its creation of meaning through myriad irreducible decisions.

Rexy Tseng (b. 1986, Taipei, TW) is a visual artist who primarily works in painting and installation. Born and raised in Taipei until the age of thirteen, Tseng relocated to upstate New York to further his education. He received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009; he withdrew from MFA at UCLA in 2012; and he withdrew from MFA at University of Oxford in 2017. Between degrees, Tseng worked as a software engineer in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. He is currently a participant in the BPA// Berlin Program for Artists.

Tseng has exhibited in Armenia, Belgium, China, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S. Highlights from his exhibition record include institutional group exhibitions at venues such as Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, DK (2024, 2022); the Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2023, 2022); the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, CN (2022, 2021, 2019); the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan, AM (2022); the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Goyang, KR (2022); the National Art Museum of China, Beijing, CN (2022); and the Museum of Siluva, LT (2021).

He has received awards and recognition from Allegro Prize, Charlottenborg Foundation, Li Chun-Shan Foundation, Taipei Art Awards, Tomorrow Sculpture Awards, and others. Tseng has participated in artist residencies internationally, including Boghossian Foundation, Brussels, BE; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE; Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass Village, CO; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Goyang, KR; the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, CN and more. In 2025, Tseng has solo exhibitions at Magenta Plains, New York, NY, KeYi Gallery, Hefei, CN, and at the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan, AM. Tseng currently lives and works in Berlin, DE.