A tree grows in the world

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum And then they charged all the people twenty-five bucks just to see 'em Don't it always seem to go That you don't know what you've got till it's gone They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Bai Yiluo, Shi Jinsong and Xu Longsen (all studio neighbors in Beijing’s Huantie lane studios) combined efforts to create works and a show that was devoid of fancy, complicated thematic issues. They came up with “tree”. Yes just tree- A woody perennial thing that sprouts out of the ground, stands proud and strong and sends CO2 wafing up through the atmosphere. No, not “Sensation” or “Inside/out” or “Infanticide” Just “Tree.” These three distinctly different artists came up with diverse but equally elegant renditions of the this simple concept.

'Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy. Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave.’ -The Givin Tree, Shel Silverstein

“Tree”, an exhibition that slipped quietly in between two other major shows at the Today Art Museum stood for a mere 2 weeks, has to have been one of the more calming and thoughtful shows around this capital town in quite some time. Not only by the sheer simplicity of the curatorial concept but the grace of the space delectably complimented the splendor of each of the works. Harking back to China’s mythical tree of extreme elegance Shi Jinsong used glass to help reassemble an actual Song tree, piece by painstaking piece. The Song tree has multiple meanings in folklore and legend- it is often equated with manhood, it that stands valiant like a soldier, resilient and brave. Shi Jinsong seems to have exploded this elegant Song shu and then carefully restructured it with splints and braces as a skeleton of the original.
Xu, a successful Chinese painter who seldom enters the contemporary art sphere, displayed 25 feet high ink wash drawings of three trees or sections of trees. These almost real-life size hundred year old trees rendered delicately in ink were (certainly a bitch to) mounted beautifully giving landscape painting a newfound dimensionality.
Bai Yiluo’s tree ideas were manifested in three different pieces: One employing his signature b/w identity portrait montage. Tiny b/w photo portraits were nailed, one by one to form a tight skin around a 3m long trunk. The trunk was then laid softly upon white linens of a hospital bed?? His next tree stood upright and was hauntingly backlit like a Tim Burtoneseque scarecrow- complete with all kinds of antiquated farm tools protruding from its lanky branches. His third installation wasn’t a tree so much as a collection of single branch pitch-forks (beautiful objects in and of themselves that was – last time I checked- going to compose an installation at the Asia Society in NY as part of Zhang Huan’s mini retrospective.) It’s hard to imagine these branch/stick/pitch forks being in such abundance somewhere in China’s hinterlands as to inspire 2 artists in one season -because the sticks aren’t manipulated- they are single branches that can be used as forks to toss hay around. Anyway, they did inspire two artists just like a lot of old stuff inspires new people in general. Bai Yi luo has taken these branches and inserted them into a stack of plaster Greek busts (ones used in academic drawing/molding classes throughout the world) to create an explosive take on the intersections of east and west, traditional agricultural culture and bourgeoisie culture, penetration and protrusion.
And then I went to NYC where, across from the world famous flat-iron building, and next to the infamous Madison Square Park dog run, stood an awe inspiring stainless steel structure by the artist Roxy Paine in the shape of a tree! Actually it was two cantilevered trees reaching out to one another and fused at the tips of their branches to create an arc under which fine looking NYers sunbathed and inhaled that fresh dog manure smell emanating from the aforementioned dog run.
And to make this tree story go on just a little longer. Back in Shanghai yesterday as I sat in the very long, very boring press conference for the Shanghai Art Fair (poised to take the city by storm) I began to chat with the man next to me who happened to be James Cohen’s (the gallery that reps Roxy Paine) cousin/business partner Arthur Solway and They’ll be showing a small replica of that very same tree in Madison Square Park at the fair where it will go for a bargain basement price of 80,000 USD (edition of 1). Get it while you can- it’s gonna be in Shanghai!