Private Selling Exhibition
7 August - 6 September 2021

Location
1 Hampton Road, Southampton

Hours
Tuesday – Sunday – 11-6pm EST

PHILLIPS X proudly presents James Prosek: Ocean Fishes. Part of Prosek’s work is about examining the practices of those who engaged in documenting, naming, and ordering nature during the Age of Exploration. His work dramatically showcases his mastery of this European tradition of representation, as well as, in the details, the influences of the miniature the tradition of India and China, and the abstractions of American modernists.

Each fish is painted life-size based on a single specimen that Prosek traveled to see—they are meant to be portraits of individuals, not images to represent an entire species. Fascinated by the dramatic shifts of sheen and coloration that telegraphed the animal’s visceral reaction to being captured or pursued, the artist managed to portray their variegated skin tones in a combination of materials.

Prosek’s work has been shown at The Royal Academy of Arts in London, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, The North Carolina Museum of Art, The Yale University Art Gallery, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The New York Historical Society Museum, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, among other institutions.