"Damaged Romanticism" features 15 internationally recognised contemporary artists whose work, in painting, sculpture, installations, and photography based media, belongs neither to a style nor a traditional 'school', but is thematically linked by a visual representation of how stubborn optimism, rather than utopianism, triumphs in the face of daily adversity. In her opening essay "Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion", Terrie Sultan offers an overview of the concept behind the exhibition and explains how the chosen works give form to contradictory sentiments of disillusionment, and defiance.David Pagel, in Romanticism's Aftermath, considers the role of Romanticism and Neoclassicism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how 'damaged romanticism' is a reinterpretation of this. The links between art and film are further explored by Colin Gardner in the third essay, From here to eternity. Preceding the main catalogue is a short story by Nick Flynn, a crystal formed entirely of holes, a new work of fiction written especially for this exhibition.

The abandoned and forgotten landscapes of rural southwestern towns are the favoured subjects of Rod Penner's paintings. The artist's keen eye combines photojournalism and photorealism to create images of small-town America. His deft use of contrasts in his images - despondency and hope, isolation and nostalgia - evokes memories of The Last Picture Show and elicits complex responses from viewers. "I'm interested in the look of things and the quality of being there," he says. "A moment that is completely frozen with all the variety of textures; rust on poles, crumbling asphalt, light hitting the grass." Penner's works are based on his photographs, digital video stills, and his experience of the rural landscapes of Texas and New Mexico. He depicts desolate, often deserted locations, the character of old houses and abandoned buildings, weather, and unique geography. His chosen scenes are infused with a cinematic quality that is the result of the exquisite light that he captures with his meticulous process. "The finished paintings should evoke contrasting responses of melancholy and warmth, desolation and serenity," he says.

Internationally acclaimed for paintings, collages, and prints that draw inspiration from sources as diverse as twentieth-century modernism, the geometry of Cubism and Minimalism, nineteenth-century English botanical illustrations, and the floral and geometic forms of traditional Indian and Egyptian art, Dan Rizzie is an artist with a seemingly endless capacity to absorb visual information and transform it into a unique iconography of the natural world. Since the mid-1970s, he has had some ninety solo exhibitions and has been included in over one hundred group exhibitions. Rizzie's work is in the permanent collections of leading art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Parrish Art Museum, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Dan Rizzie is the first monograph on this major American artist. It presents a hundred works to showcase an artistic career trajectory that has been both broad-ranging and consistent over four decades. Jane Livingston sets Rizzie's work in context with an introduction that traces his artistic influences and production from his formative years in Egypt, Jordan, Jamaica, India, and Texas to his mature work created in New York. An extensive interview between Rizzie and editor Terrie Sultan further explores his artistic journey and creative philosophy, while Mark Smith highlights Rizzie's development and importance as a printmaker. Praising Rizzie's achievements across painting, collage, and printmaking, as well as the innovative ways in which he often blends these media, Smith proclaims that Rizzie's art "is 'decorative' in the very best way, in that it possesses a timeless beauty. And it is, above all, authentically his own."

Alice Aycock (b. 1946) emerged onto the New York art scene in the 1970s and is best known for her large-scale public sculptures that often combine an industrial appearance with references to weightlessness as well as to science and cosmology. Aycock also has embraced the practice of drawing throughout her enormously productive career. Alice Aycock: Drawings is the first exploration of her spectacular drawings, which include elements of mirage, fantasy, and science, and evoke both abstract thinking and bodily sensation. The works on paper featured in this handsome volume highlight the major themes that have governed her artistic practice: the role of architecture as a founding point of reference; the importance of mechanics and structure; and references to nature. As author Jonathan Fineberg demonstrates, Aycock is an artist who thinks on paper. Her works are often equal parts engineering plan and science fiction imagining. Visualizing such contradictions allows us to, in her words, transport ourselves "farther into another place." Distributed for the Parrish Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Grey Art Gallery, New York University(04/21/13-07/13/13) Parrish Art Museum(04/21/13-07/14/13) Santa Barbara Museum of Art (01/25/14-04/19/14) University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara(01/25/14-04/19/14)