Art&Nature and Technology: Roxy Paine

Roxy Pain is an American artist (b.1966)

'Roxy Paine blurs the line between human, nature and machine, creating mechanical means for performing human actions'

In his body of work, Roxy Paine mirrors natural proceses, drawing increasingly on the tension between organic and man-made environments, between human desire for orer and nature's drive to reproduce. His highly detailed simulation of natural phenomena include an ambitious series of hand-wroght stainless steel trees, vitrines of mushroom and plant life in various states of decay and several large-scale machines designed to replicate creative processes. Collectively, his works demonstrate the human attempt to impose order on natural forces, depicting the struggle between the natural and the artificial, the rational and instinctual.

Amanita Muscaria Field 2000- shows a filed of psychoactive mushrooms that appear as if they are sprouting from the gallery floor.

Roxy Paine uses both mechanical means and the innate logic of natural forms to create his 'Dendroid' tree-like sculptures- Understand the language of how a tree grows, and from there he creates fictional tree species that grow to a logic of their own.

'I've processed the idea of tree and created a system for its form. I take this organic majestic being and break it down into components and rules. The brances laborious process of welding together the cylindrical piping and rods of diminishing size." (Neil, Jonathan T.D.'Do Androids Dream of Making Art? Roxy Pain's Robert Artworks and Artificial Environments Ask Just that QQuestion in Art Review August 2006)