Jeffrey Eric Rothstein is an American photographer who is challenging and reinvigorating the American Western landscape tradition as well as exploring other non-traditional methods of making photographs. His work revolves around the analog film process, specific periods of painting, color, mysticism, abstraction, human connectedness in the digital age, and psychedelics. Jeffrey’s practice reexamines the history of photography and recreates an altered and heightened mental state that mirrors hallucinations. He is best known for his iconic landscapes based on Chinese paintings of the 8th and 10th centuries, The Zion Series: Plateaux of Mirrors (2010-present), a project born of his love of the western United States and his fascination with the intersection of painting and photography. His new work, a continuation of the Zion series titled Both Directions at Once is a deeper journey through the primordial landscapes of southern Utah and his ecstatic vision of his experiences in those spaces. Inspired by the otherworldly landscapes of southern Utah, Jeffrey has created a deeply mystical and hallucinatory body of work. The title refers to a conversation John Coltrane had with the great saxophonist Wayne Shorter about the evolution with his jazz compositions during a recording session in the 1950’s “....about starting a sentence in the middle, then going to the beginning and the end of it at the same time…. both directions at once.” This is the space he looks to find – magic by another name – to create his work.
• Jeffrey’s Oblique Strategies bridges the realms of photography and painting, drawing inspiration from the geometric abstraction of the 1960s and 70s while reflecting the enduring influence of Maynard Dixon’s painterly landscapes and Laura Gilpin’s 1930s photographic meditations on the American West. Digitally composed and then printed as singular, unrepeatable works on canvas, the series transforms photographic captures of painted textures, walls, and surfaces into vivid, abstract compositions that re-imagine the natural world in bold, graphic terms.
His practice bridges photography and painting—using photographic tools to create compositions that are digitally edited and stitched together, then printed on canvas as singular, unrepeatable works. Though rooted in photography, their physicality and presentation blur the boundaries, existing fully as paintings.
This hybrid approach allows the work to command space and interact dynamically with its environment—asserting both its uniqueness and its versatility in large-scale architectural contexts.
Through this synthesis, Jeffrey blurs the boundaries between mediums, creating a dynamic tension that allows his work to both command space and harmonize within architectural contexts. By channeling the timeless spirit of the American landscape into contemporary abstraction, Oblique Strategies becomes a meditation on presence, transformation, and the enduring resonance of place.
• For his Zion Canyon/Plateaux of Mirrors series, he studied with a professor of Chinese Art history and a curator of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum for two years focusing on scroll paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties. This body of work is not about photographing the actual appearance of the natural world. Instead, Jeffrey distills his impressions as did the painters of the Song Dynasty to create works that idealize the natural world and emphasize the graphic qualities that enable him to translate nature into an essential impressionistic medium that conveys the energy and spirit of the landscape in a painterly abstract form.
• With his on-going project, The Architecture of Mountains, Jeffrey has access to a low orbit geo-survey satellite as his camera. While the global landscape has been transformed by millennia of human occupation, his artistic expression has also been deeply imprinted with images of the natural world. Going beyond representation, these “landscapes of the mind” as he likes to call them are imbued with personal feelings to convey the inner landscape of the artist’s imagination.
• Jeffrey studied photography under the post war New York School photographers, Jerry Liebling and Elaine Mays and painting with Arthur Hoener, an early OpArt painter and student of Josef Albers at Hampshire College. Post college, he was a photo assistant to the modern master Richard Avedon while attending The Whitney Independent Study Program studying with guest artists Richard Serra and Brice Marsden.
• BA- Hampshire College, Amherst Ma.
•The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP) NY
• Born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He spent his early years in the Caribbean, attended secondary school in London but has always called New York City home.
EXHIBITIONS
•Von Lintel/ Both Directions at Once / Los Angeles, Ca
•Susan Eley Gallery/On the Rocks, New York, NY
•Kasher/Potamkin Gallery, Chelsea NYC
•The Tarn Collection/ Zion Mandala, England
•Lu Magnus Gallery/What the Thunder Said, New, NY
•Unwrap Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
•Susan Eley Gallery/Blaze, New York, NY
•Unwrap Gallery/Mie Gakure, Tokyo, Japan
•The New Erotic Museum, Los Angeles, Ca
•The New Erotic Museum, Los Angeles, Ca
•Boltax Gallery- Summer Girls, Shelter Island, NY
•The Tarn Collection, London, England
•Paul Morris Gallery- New York, NY
•Paul Morris Gallery-The Armory Show
•Saibu Gallery/Summer’s Soft Song-Tokyo, Japan
•Baron/Boisante- Trippy World ,New York, NY
•Jason McCoy Gallery-Kansas City, MO
•Paul Morris Gallery-New York, NY
•Paul Morris Gallery-New York, NY-The Armory Show
• Jeffrey’s Oblique Strategies bridges the realms of photography and painting, drawing inspiration from the geometric abstraction of the 1960s and 70s while reflecting the enduring influence of Maynard Dixon’s painterly landscapes and Laura Gilpin’s 1930s photographic meditations on the American West. Digitally composed and then printed as singular, unrepeatable works on canvas, the series transforms photographic captures of painted textures, walls, and surfaces into vivid, abstract compositions that re-imagine the natural world in bold, graphic terms.
His practice bridges photography and painting—using photographic tools to create compositions that are digitally edited and stitched together, then printed on canvas as singular, unrepeatable works. Though rooted in photography, their physicality and presentation blur the boundaries, existing fully as paintings.
This hybrid approach allows the work to command space and interact dynamically with its environment—asserting both its uniqueness and its versatility in large-scale architectural contexts.
Through this synthesis, Jeffrey blurs the boundaries between mediums, creating a dynamic tension that allows his work to both command space and harmonize within architectural contexts. By channeling the timeless spirit of the American landscape into contemporary abstraction, Oblique Strategies becomes a meditation on presence, transformation, and the enduring resonance of place.
• For his Zion Canyon/Plateaux of Mirrors series, he studied with a professor of Chinese Art history and a curator of Asian Art at The Metropolitan Museum for two years focusing on scroll paintings of the Tang and Song dynasties. This body of work is not about photographing the actual appearance of the natural world. Instead, Jeffrey distills his impressions as did the painters of the Song Dynasty to create works that idealize the natural world and emphasize the graphic qualities that enable him to translate nature into an essential impressionistic medium that conveys the energy and spirit of the landscape in a painterly abstract form.
• With his on-going project, The Architecture of Mountains, Jeffrey has access to a low orbit geo-survey satellite as his camera. While the global landscape has been transformed by millennia of human occupation, his artistic expression has also been deeply imprinted with images of the natural world. Going beyond representation, these “landscapes of the mind” as he likes to call them are imbued with personal feelings to convey the inner landscape of the artist’s imagination.
• Jeffrey studied photography under the post war New York School photographers, Jerry Liebling and Elaine Mays and painting with Arthur Hoener, an early OpArt painter and student of Josef Albers at Hampshire College. Post college, he was a photo assistant to the modern master Richard Avedon while attending The Whitney Independent Study Program studying with guest artists Richard Serra and Brice Marsden.
• BA- Hampshire College, Amherst Ma.
•The Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP) NY
• Born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He spent his early years in the Caribbean, attended secondary school in London but has always called New York City home.
EXHIBITIONS
•Von Lintel/ Both Directions at Once / Los Angeles, Ca
•Susan Eley Gallery/On the Rocks, New York, NY
•Kasher/Potamkin Gallery, Chelsea NYC
•The Tarn Collection/ Zion Mandala, England
•Lu Magnus Gallery/What the Thunder Said, New, NY
•Unwrap Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
•Susan Eley Gallery/Blaze, New York, NY
•Unwrap Gallery/Mie Gakure, Tokyo, Japan
•The New Erotic Museum, Los Angeles, Ca
•The New Erotic Museum, Los Angeles, Ca
•Boltax Gallery- Summer Girls, Shelter Island, NY
•The Tarn Collection, London, England
•Paul Morris Gallery- New York, NY
•Paul Morris Gallery-The Armory Show
•Saibu Gallery/Summer’s Soft Song-Tokyo, Japan
•Baron/Boisante- Trippy World ,New York, NY
•Jason McCoy Gallery-Kansas City, MO
•Paul Morris Gallery-New York, NY
•Paul Morris Gallery-New York, NY-The Armory Show