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Peter Rostovsky at The Project - New York - Brief Article
Art in America, Dec, 2001 by Max Henry
Paintings that depict the beauty and immensity of nature and man's puniness within it were a specialty of Romantic painters. Peter Rostovsky's third solo show at The Project was at once a lampoon of and homage to Romantic landscape painting. He literally took man out of the landscape by placing figurative sculptures on chest-high pedestals in front of both Epiphany Model 3 (2001), a 2-by-6-foot canvas showing an ominous horizon of sky and sea in gray and beige, and Epiphany Model 2 (2001), a 7-foot-diameter tondo depicting a pink and blue sky. The small male figurines (about 6 inches high) were dressed like modern-day hikers and stood, a la Caspar David Friedrich, on rocky, mossy cliffs, looking onto the painted vistas. From a distance, one could experience perspectival tricks of the eye as the figures seemed to merge with the canvases.
In the center of the gallery was Anamorph (2001), a 7-foot-high column covered with mirrorlike material. Surrounding it on the floor was a doughnut-shaped digital print of a barely discernible image. In its reflection on the column, the print was transformed into a panorama of snowcapped peaks. Walking around this pleasantly strange object, you could see distorted reflections of the other works in the room.
As well as recuperating anamorphic strategies of the Baroque era, Rostovsky's art provides fresh insights into the psyche of the Romantics, stripping away the maudlin aspects of their time. It also hints at new developments on the horizon--a future of artificial environments that may rival the natural world or, at least, distort our perception of it. Despite its engagement of seemingly antique genres, Rostovsky's blend of digital image-making, landscape painting, sculpture and installation is very much of the early 21st century.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group
