Study No. 1 for “New Amalgam”

Roxy Paine’s interdisciplinary artistic practice explores the intersection of nature and technology, posing existential questions about the growing conflict between natural and manmade environments. This ink drawing is a study for a stainless-steel sculpture, New Amalgam (2017), part of his long-running Dendroid series of artificially engineered treelike forms that mirror nature but retain their industrial artifice. At first, the drawing appears to depict a simple leafless tree, but as its title suggests, the “tree” is actually an amalgam of various dissimilar branches, each having distinct physical characteristics and growth habits. Though it displays a certain sublime beauty, this fictive tree illustrates the contradiction between natural and artificial structures, revealing the artist’s ambivalent feelings about tampering with nature.