روكسي باين
רוקסי פיין
ロキシー·パイネ
록시 페인

Maelstrom

Metropolitan
Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
at 82nd Street
212-535-7710
New York
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor
Roof Garden
Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom
April 28-October 25, 2009
(weather permitting)

Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom features a 130-foot-long by 45-foot-wide stainless-steel sculpture, Maelstrom (2009), that encompasses the nearly 8,000-square-foot Roof Garden, and is the largest sculpture to have been installed on the roof of the Metropolitan. Set against, and in dialogue with, the greensward of Central Park and its architectural backdrop, this swirling entanglement of stainless- steel pipe showcases the work of an artist keenly interested in the interplay between the natural world and the built environment, as well as the human desire for order amid nature’s inherently chaotic processes.

A provocateur, Paine builds elaborate and complex constructions to address conceptually complex concerns, providing fertile ground for thought and contemplation. Since the mid-1990s, he has created a diverse body of work that falls into several distinct yet related categories: naturalistic works (startlingly realistic, hand-formed replicas of botanical forms and fungi, rendered with synthetic materials and featuring various stages of growth and decay); machine-based works (intricate, computer-driven machines that mechanically produce abstract paintings, sculptures, and drawings); and a series of large-scale stainless-steel Dendroids, fabricated from industrial components.

In the latter category, Maelstrom is Paine’s most complex and ambitious sculpture to date, evoking a Da Vinci-like study of whirling water or a neural network. It is part of a series of work based on dendrites’ branching structures such as trees, neurons, industrial pipelines, or vascular networks. The Dendroids, as the series is called, began in 1998 with installations studying the innate logic of trees. Exquisitely crafted and largely handwrought, Maelstrom is composed of thousands of variously sized, cylindrical stainless-steel pipes and rods that have been welded together. More than seven tons of material comprise the sculpture, which was hand-welded in the artist’s upstate New York studio. Familiar themes are at play — artificiality and the natural world, sly humor and irony, control and chaos, abstraction and figuration, and the machine-made and the handmade — while conceptually complex concerns are addressed, such as human desire to control nature and nature’s indifference to that desire. Visitors are encouraged to move throughout the installation to experience its inherent drama and turbulence.

Born in New York in 1966, Paine grew up in the suburbs of Northern Virginia. He left home at age 15, crisscrossing the United States, and studied art at the College of Santa Fe, New Mexico (1985-86), and Pratt Institute, New York (1986-88). Since 1990, his work has been exhibited internationally and is included in a wide spectrum of public and private collections in the United States and abroad. He lives and works in Brooklyn, Long Island City, and Treadwell, New York.

Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom is organized by Anne L. Strauss, Associate Curator of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, with organizational assistance by Taylor Miller, Associate Building Manager for Exhibitions, and graphics by Barbara Weiss, Senior Graphic Designer.

The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden opened to the public in 1987. Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom is the 12th consecutive single-artist installation for the Roof Garden. The past 11 annual installations have featured large-scale works by contemporary artists: Ellsworth Kelly (1998), Magdalena Abakanowicz (1999), David Smith (2000), Joel Shapiro (2001), Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen (2002), Roy Lichtenstein (2003), Andy Goldsworthy (2004), Sol LeWitt (2005), Cai Guo-Qiang (2006), Frank Stella (2007), and Jeff Koons (2008).
source: blogsartinfo

Roxy Paine’s stainless-steel tree sculptures have captured the public’s imagination, and mine as well. I’ve seen some of them installed in parks in New York, Seattle, Saint Louis, Washington, DC, and elsewhere, and they always demand and reward my attention. For one thing, they are beautiful, and for another, they make me think – two essential attributes as far as I am concerned. (Yes, I know, some great art is not conventionally beautiful, but that’s another discussion.)

Roxy Paine’s stainless steel Inversion was shown at Art Basel in 2008, and is bound for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Paine calls the series “Dendroids,” a name that combines dendron, Greek for “tree”, and “oid,” a suffix meaning “form.” But the title is more nuanced. Other words derived from dendron refer to branching systems, and in zoology “oid” denotes a creature belonging to a higher level of taxonomy. So “Dendroids” aren’t just tree forms, but allusions to branching structures from neurons to rivers to genealogical charts. And a viewer may be moved to consider the congruencies among such disparate but related systems.

Their translation of organic forms into cold, hard steel reminds me about the intersection of nature and human industry. This is a terrain that Paine inhabits. He is known also for hyper-real replications of plants and fungi using polymer and other materials.

Just what is a “Dendroid”?
The “Dendroids” — always leafless — point to a future about which we remain profoundly uneasy – a time when we routinely will substitute the manmade for the natural. This is where the “oid” comes in: today the suffix suggests a manufactured substitute, the prime example being “android,” a counterfeit man (andros). The beginnings are already here in the form of bioengineered livestock and vegetables and lab-grown organs. Despite its promise the whole business is somehow disturbing, and Paine’s work is all the more unsettling for its spectacular and beguiling beauty.

Metal trees are not new. I remember encountering some 18th-century examples in the garden of the tsarist Peterhof Palace outside of St Petersburg, Russia. They were humorous diversions that surprised strollers by suddenly creating a downpour. And Paine is not the only contemporary artist I admire who makes metal tree sculptures. Some of Rona Pondick’s sprout human heads and the ground beneath others is littered with apple-like fruits that contain toothy mouths. Their nightmarish surrealism represents psychological pain with Old Testament overtones about human nature.
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source: blogchinaalibaba

美国现代艺术家洛克西·潘(Roxy Paine)的树形系列雕塑是其招牌性作品。
通过一系列不锈钢大树，作者表现了现代都市生活中，人与人、人与自然、虚拟与现实等形成的剪不断理还乱的网络关系。这些大树都是由不锈钢焊接而成，体积大、银色外观与现代都市建筑呈现出微妙的和谐，而形态又和自然界的树木相同，极具视觉冲击力，人们在驻足观赏的同时也会不禁思考
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source: lallavedelestudioblogspot

Las primeras obras de Roxy Paine que me llamaron la atención fueron un grupo de masas, con aspecto viscoso y colores brillantes. Pensé que guardaban cierta relación con mis “Fluidos”. Al continuar conociendo la obra de esta artista, encontré esta serie de árboles de acero inoxidable.
Son muchos los artistas que han trabajado o trabajan en la actualidad con los árboles, pero creo que los de esta artista merecen ser destacados.