Roxy Paine (b. 1966)

In Untitled {Red Tree Drawing}, fiery sinuous lines flow across the paper, combining to create a large red tree that fills the picture plane.  The bright color of the tree immediately strikes the viewer as unnatural, creating a conflict between the real and the imagined.  This drawing relates to the large series of tree sculptures that artist Roxy Paine calls Dendroids, a term that refers to anything that branches from a central “trunk,” including trees, synaptic structures, computer board circuitry, and venous systems. These widely diverse references are central to the artist’s practice. Ranging in scale from twelve to fifty-five feet in height, Paine’s tree sculptures are hand-made from stainless-steel and other materials with their industrial markings and weld marks visible. As such, they embody both the artificial and the natural, calling into question permanence versus impermanence. Rarely seen in the public domain, Paine’s tree drawings are significant to his larger series of sculptures as schematics and ruminations on a theme that has engrossed the artist since 1999.