Roxy Paine Maelstrom
The Times reviews artist Roxy Paine’s installation “Maelstrom”, which opens on the Metropolitan Museum’s roof next week (through Oct 25).
“It looks as if a tornado had ripped through Central Park and deposited its gleanings here. Except the thicket is made of shiny metal rods and pipe: some 10,000 pieces weighing more than seven tons and ranging from three-eighths of an inch to 10 inches in diameter, with larger trunk sections made of rolled plate. It’s as though all that wood had been transformed by a Midas with a stainless-steel touch…..the evocation of a complicated relationship between man and nature. Contrary to the fantasies of many sentimental environmentalists, nature, in Mr. Paine’s universe, is not always beneficent. He has created broken trees in stainless steel that appear to have been hit by lightning, and one sculpture whose moving parts are activated by ambient radiation. Nature, as viewed through the lens of Mr. Paine’s art, can be downright hostile.”