Roxy Paine's Dendroids

Roxy Paine, Placebo, 2004, Stainless Steel, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO.

Roxy Paine's arboreal sculptures known as Dendroids are unmistakably alien. Made from industrial pipes and rods welded together, the stainless steel structures would probably look more at home on a science fiction movie set. Smooth columnar trunks ramify into angular limbs and twigs, which jut awkwardly out into space. Although, they have been exhibited in galleries and museums, the works are usually erected outdoors in park-like public settings where they stand in stark contrast to the surrounding environment.

This is the case with Placebo commissioned by the St. Louis Art Museum in 2004. Reaching 56 feet in height, the shiny vertical structure sits amid several real trees on the east lawn contiguous to the building.  The juxtaposition of the silver, inorganic form with the course brown bark and verdant landscape magnifies Placebo's foreignness. 

Unlike the natural beauty of the real tree in the background, Placebo's metal branches are stilted and ungraceful.  The tangled limbs do not taper into delicate points but end in blunt stubs. Even the birds perceive the unnaturalness of Paine's artificial construction and avoid it.

Not only does the sculpture appear incongruent with the natural setting, the title invokes a cold, clinical association with scientific experiments in which doctors beguile unsuspecting patients.  It is easy to be deceived by Paine's artifice. His Dendroid series seems to comment on the dichotomous relationship, which exists between nature and industry; however, his artworks slyly reveal that nature, in a way, is also constructed. For example, the landscape that envelops Placebo is man-made, fabricated like Paine's sculpture. This unnoticeable alteration of the natural world by man is the real deception Paine is attempting to expose. 

Roxy Paine, Placebo, 2004, Stainless Steel, St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO.