Richard Rothman: New York

Richard Rothman

The Serge Sorokko Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of photographs by Richard Rothman. "Shrubs" is a selection of photographs taken over a six year period in which Rothman explores the landscape in and around New York City, observing the role of some of the most banal manifestations of nature - shrubbery - in an environment of inescapable development. Rothman photographs nature as those of us who live in cities and suburbs (now approximately eighty percent of Americans) habitually encounter it - in the margins of the public, commercial, and domestic spaces that are common to everyday experience. He records a world of urban and suburban spraw in which nature has first been stripped from the landscape and then reinserted, often with the intention of masking the harsh realities of contemporary commercial and public spaces. Many of the photographs of domestic settings suggest the attempts of homeowners to create improbable cases of privacy and escape.

In addressing our growing estrangement from both the natural world and the built environment, Rothman's photographs are testaments to the way we live now and reflect broadly on our culture and our times. Rothman's most recent exhibition was at the Queens Museum of Modern Art, Bulova Corporate Art Center, Queens, NY in 1996. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris; and the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY.