SPLIT by Roxy Paine
Roxy Paine

Above are pictures of other works by the artist

If it weren't for the glossy manufactured material, you might easily mistake Roxy Paine's life-size and lifelike stainless steel tree for one of the hundreds of real trees growing in the park. Except that for Paine's tree, winter lasts all year: It will never leaf out.

A New Yorker, Paine can best be categorized as a conceptual artist — someone who relies on ideas to fuel his artworks. Here he seems to be prodding us to consider the limits of our ability to control and reproduce nature. So, we've accepted the idea of artificial hearts; how about artificial landscapes? Paine once said, "I don't want to make pieces that tell people what to think. But I do want to make them very fertile grounds for thought ... "


Art at Sculpture Garden