

SWIM, FROM ROCI USA (WAX FIRE WORKS)
1990
This striking 1990 work from Rauschenberg's celebrated ROCI (Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange) series exemplifies his mastery of photographic transfer and mixed-media techniques, here executed in acrylic and fire wax on stainless steel. The composition juxtaposes a classical Venus figure rendered in warm sienna tones against industrial rigging in deep blue and a curtained structure, creating the artist's signature visual poetry of high culture and everyday life. As part of the ROCI USA (Wax Fire Works) suite—the culminating chapter of Rauschenberg's ambitious decade-long global art exchange project—this piece holds particular historical significance within his oeuvre. The reflective stainless steel support adds a luminous, almost ethereal quality that subtly implicates the viewer in the work's layered narrative.
- Medium
- acrylic and fire wax in colors on stainless steel
- Edition
- 16 of 22
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Richard Hamilton
British · b. 1922

Hamilton similarly combined photographic imagery of classical figures and pop culture references using transfer techniques on reflective or industrial surfaces, creating layered compositions that juxtapose high culture with everyday visual material in a Neo-Dada spirit closely parallel to this ROCI piece.

James Rosenquist
American · b. 1933

Rosenquist worked at large format scales combining figurative imagery including the nude female form with industrial and architectural elements using acrylic on reflective surfaces, producing the same collision of classical beauty and industrial modernity seen in this stainless steel work.

Sigmar Polke
German · b. 1941

Polke employed photographic transfer, wax, and experimental mixed media on unconventional metallic and industrial supports, layering classical and contemporary imagery with warm sienna tones against cool industrial grounds in a way that strongly echoes the material and compositional approach of this ROCI work.

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