Roxy Paine

The art of Brooklyn-based Roxy Paine can take various forms, though in all cases his work expresses the tension between nature and technology, permanent and impermanent, real and artificial, and other such dichotomies. Perhaps best known for his PMU (Painting Manufacture Unit) machine and SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker) device that extrude plastics to create mechanically-made sculptures, Paine also creates life-size, stainless steel trees that he installs outdoors in natural environments, such as Bluff, which was installed in Central Park, New York, in 2002. Seen amid the relative splendor of "real" nature, Paine's stark, stainless steel trees are both repellent and strangely evocative.

This summer, Paine will present a new monumental tree on the grounds of the art museum. Based on a tree the artist saw in a painting by nineteenth-century German Romantic artist Caspar David Freidrich, Paine's 40-foot sculpture, titled Dead Tree, depicts this towering natural form in a fragile state between life and death. Nestled in a niche created by the bend of the Roaring Fork River, Paine's tree, which is proportionate to the mature spruce and cottonwood trees which surround it, brings a new consideration to this special site.

Major support for the Aspen Art Museum's 25th Anniversary exhibition program has been provided by the AAM National Council, Vicki and Kent Logan, Nancy and Bob Magoon, Susan and Larry Marx, Carolyn and Bill Powers, and Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., M.D. with additional support from the City of Aspen, Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond Learsy, the L.L.W.W. Foundation, Toby Devan Lewis and Jonathan Lewis, Kelli and Allen Questrom, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Debra and Dennis Scholl, and June and Paul Schorr.

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Roxy Paine
Aspen Art Museum grounds