Dorothea Rockburne

On view June 30 through July 25, 2011, The Drawing Room in East Hampton is pleased to present "Dorothea Rockburne", a selection of works inspired by astronomy and mathematics. Concurrently, a Dorothea Rockburne retrospective is on view at the Parrish Art Museum.

Dorothea Rockburne’s formative studies of the foundation of geometry and the mathematical discipline of topologies with Max Dehn (German, 1878-1952) at Black Mountain College propelled her to continue as an artist in spite of the temptation to pursue her gifts as a young scientist. Her lifelong fascination with astrophysics informs the works in the focused installation where two prints, eight watercolors and four paintings from the last decade are unified with one prescient collage from 1993. In particular, the circular and elliptical paths of astronomical matter captured her mind’s eye in the making of these works. Each composition reflects Rockburne’s gift of materializing an esoteric principle of nature in a range of media that includes collage, powdered pigments, watercolor, etching and silkscreen techniques.

Rockburne’s paintings are individual performances that take us back to the origin of the universe and its forces that continue to surround us. In the watercolor paintings Elliptical Turn (2008) and Prime Partition Five (2006), a primal immediacy of materiality and Zen energy in her brush create layered collisions of pure pigment in celestial motion. Ecstatic Absorption (2007) resembles a detail in the night sky – a trajectory of stars or planets on parallel paths collecting matter in the form of watercolor wash as they swirl under a shower of hot vermillion.

See below for full press release and selected works.