Cross Contemporary Art is pleased to present Christy Rupp: Catastrophozoic.The term Catastrophozoic, refers to an alternate classification of an era that emphasizes animal life rather than human existence This naming differs from the generally accepted term Anthropocene, which marks the age during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate. Christy Rupp's solo show at Cross Contemporary Art focuses on the ways that humans are currently contributing to climate chaos with activities ranging from indiscriminate carbon emissions, water contamination and resource extraction and the threat these unchecked behaviors have on planet and its many life forms.

Christy Rupp explores these themes in paper collages and sculptures that unite the irony of art history’s romantic vision of the natural world with the incongruity of watching nature fight back. In some of her works on paper, reproductions of Hudson River School paintings are bisected by train-pulled oil cars or a maze of leaking pipelines. Her welded steel and plastic sculptures study the vulnerablity of birdlife found through the lens of art history- from Frida Kahlo’s frightened “Parrots” to Fabritius’ captured “Goldfinch”, to Miro’s “Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird”. Rupp constructs these birds from discarded plastic netting used in supermarkets for wrapping produce- materials that are discarded yet remain. This plastic refuse persists in the environment, threatening the digestive systems and habitat of wildlife. According to art writer Eleanor Heartney, Christy Rupp “captures the sense that we have entered a new era in which humans are redirecting natural history in a way that will be calamitous for all”

Christy Rupp has been on the forefront of urban ecology living and working in New York City and the Catskills for the past 4 decades. Her wry humor paired with a naturalist’s curiosity had led her to explore the biosphere and its multi-layered systems.She has received grants from NYSCA, NEA, Art Matters INC., Anonymous Was a Woman, and a CALL grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Christy Rupp has exhibited her artwork internationally and as an early participant of CoLab, is also part of Art History.