Confluences Press Release
For Immediate Release
Exhibition: Daniel Rothbart: Confluences
May 7 – June 13, 2026
Galerie Depardieu
6 Rue Dr Jacques Guidoni
(ex Passage Gioffrédo)
06000 Nice – France
+33 (0) 497121299
galerie.depardieu@orange.fr
www.galerie-depardieu.com
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 7 from 6 – 8 pm
The Galerie Depardieu is pleased to present Confluences, recent works by Daniel Rothbart. The exhibition features seventeen digital collages alongside a new kinetic sculpture titled Neapolitan Dreamwheel.
Confluences—places where one river flows into another—have long been regarded as sacred places. Rothbart’s practice engages this symbolic terrain through floating sculptures that, when set upon the water, are animated by wind, currents, and the wakes of passing boats. These works exist in continual dialogue with their environment, shaped by natural forces beyond the artist’s control.
In parallel, Rothbart develops digital collages that virtually place his sculptural forms within aquatic environments—and on terra firma—spanning both real and imagined landscapes across varied geographies and temporal contexts. Through these layered, immersive compositions, he investigates questions of cultural identity, displacement, and the shifting resonance of meaning over time and place.
Neapolitan Dreamwheel is a rotating wheel of sculptural forms cut from fluorescent Plexiglas, suspended between a lantern and a rear-projection screen. On one side, the viewer encounters a moving, luminous sculpture; on the other, its real-time projected counterpart—an ephemeral echo of the physical form.
The cutouts originate from a series of wall-based sculptures the artist developed upon first arriving in Naples in 1990, at the outset of a multi-year sojourn shaped by the city’s culture and layered history. As with many of the collages in this exhibition, the work is guided by the movement of water—drawn into a space of fluid consciousness where light, motion, and memory converge.
Rothbart’s studio projects include RamleAnthropocene, the Pool of the Arches / Center for Contemporary Art Ramle CACR, Ramle, Israel; Water Clocks, Hudson River / The Hudson Eye, Hudson, New York; Inscrutable Theologies, Saint Elisabeth Church / Kunstwechsel, Aachen, Germany; Air de Venise, Venice, Italy; and WATERLINES, Galerie Depardieu, Nice, France. He has exhibited at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy; the Museum of Contemporary Art MoCAB, Belgrade, Serbia; Momenta Art and Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn, New York; and Andrea Meislin Gallery, Exit Art, and WhiteBox Contemporary Art Center in New York City.
He is the author of three books. Jewish Metaphysics as Generative Principle in American Art (1994) explores the relationship between Jewish culture and post-war American abstraction. The Story of the Phoenix (1999) examines fluid themes of creation, destruction, and authorship. Seeing Naples: Reports from the Shadow of Vesuvius (2018) is a book of travel writing inspired by Rothbart’s experiences as a Fulbright scholar in Naples during the early 1990’s. The work combines personal narrative with stories from the city’s history, ancient and modern, that speak to Neapolitan values and culture.
Rothbart was awarded a New York State Council on the Arts grant and a New York Foundation for the Arts grant along with residencies at the Artists’ Residence Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel and La Napoule Art Foundation, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France. His work is the subject of a monograph by Enrico Pedrini published by Ulisse e Calipso of Naples, Italy.
Daniel Rothbart’s work can be found in public and private collections, including the Artist’s Book Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
www.danielrothbart.org
youtube.com/danielrothbart