The department of art and design and the Rosefsky Gallery welcomed Sean Caulfield, an artist and a professor of fine arts at the University of Alberta, for the opening of his exhibition “A Tragedy of the Commons.”

The exhibition featured multiple large-scale text and image linocut, inkjet and silkscreen prints and sculptures made from recycled and found wood. Caulfield’s work incorporated some of the eight points for avoiding tragedies of the commons developed by Steven Hoffman, a York University professor of global health, law and political science, in response to Nobel Prize-winner Elinor Ostrom’s work on the same subject.

The printworks were originally created for the book “Planet for Sale,” written by Hoffman, drawing on works like Dr. Seuss’ “The Lorax” and Dante’s “Inferno.” Caulfield explained his vision behind “A Tragedy of the Commons.”

“My intent was to create an exhibition that offers viewers a wide range of artistic experiences,” Caulfield wrote in an email. “On the one hand, there are prints that utilizes a bold graphic language that speaks to the history of print in the realms of activism and political satire, with reference to historic artists such as Durer, Hogarth, as well as contemporary visual languages found in graphic novels and manga.”

Much of Caulfield’s work reckons with the social and political dimensions of the transition from fossil fuels. He said that given Alberta’s reliance on oil, it is deeply important to balance ecological and social concerns as oil dependence weakens.

“A major part of the province of Alberta’s economy is connected to resource extraction, and as a result there [is] a considerable amount of research at the University of Alberta focused on issues connected to the oil industry,” Caulfield wrote. “Both in relation to making the industry more sustainable, but also in relation to the challenge of balancing the economic growth that this industry brings with the need to consider environmental impacts, and [considering] alternative modes of energy production, alongside societal shifts that can occur to foster more sustainable economic and political systems.”

In addition to his work with Hoffman and Sue Colberg, a professor of art and design at the University of Alberta, Caulfield pulled from several influences to inform his work. The background of these works, which peek around the edges and through the prints, are taken from 18th-century Spanish colonial landscapes to comment on the colonial legacies present in modern-day resource exploitation and environmental decay. His sculptures incorporated images appropriated from Andrea Vesalius’ “On the Fabric of the Human Body” to explore the human body as an empirical scientific form versus the human body as a self outside of quantitative analysis.

The exhibition was set up with the assistance of interns from the art and design department. Sebastiano Marini, a senior double-majoring in cinema and art and design, described the experience.

“I don’t know if all the artists will be like this, but he would give us a lot of freedom and ask for a lot of input,” Marini said. “He installs stuff differently based on the space so he’s making decisions as he installs, and he also referred to us a lot to help him make those decisions.”

The Rosefsky Gallery was packed with students, faculty and community members for the opening and Caulfield’s talk. The exhibition, which is open until Sept. 26, is a part of the Rosefsky Gallery’s efforts to host artists working in a variety of media, according to co-director Sarah Nance.

Nance, also an assistant professor of integrated practice in the art and design department, expects the gallery to be just as busy when its next exhibitions open. Dan Hernandez’s “Warp Zone” will debut on Oct. 17.

“We usually have a great turnout, so I’m happy to say that that’s not a surprise,” Nance said. “I’m always pleased at the depth of the questions that come from the people attending the exhibitions. People always seem very engaged with the work and have different perspectives that sort of draws out different aspects of the work by them inquiring about it.”