Anthropology is in Alexis Rockman’s blood. His mother, Diana Wall, worked briefly for Margaret Mead, and as a child he loved the American Museum of Natural History, where he pored over the flora and fauna of centuries past. In the mid 1980s, Rockman tried to recreate this kind of iconography in his paintings. In the early 90s, he brought dark humor to the works Barnyard Scene, Jungle Fever, and The Trough, which depicted interspecies sex. In “Oceanus,” Rockman presents watercolors on a monumental scale, including a panorama that measures 8 by 24 feet. Moving from land to sea, he tells a story of exploitation, change, and most of all, infinite beauty. —Elena Clavarino