Roxy Paine’s ‘Askew’ Dendroid at NCMA

Stainless Branches

A few weeks ago artist Roxy Paine arrived in Raleigh to install his new piece for NCMA.  The sculpture is part of NCMA’s forthcoming expansion. The structural expansion at NCMA is almost done. The exterior phase of the project is just the beginning.  An array of over 200 trees will now be installed in various patterns along with reflection pools and outdoor sculptures.  Everything is moving forward for a spring opening and the excitement is palpable when you talk to staff. The NCMA addition is one of the most architecturally exciting events in the city in recent history. Of the sculptures Roxy Paines is the first to be installed: A 30 foot tall gleaming steel structure called Askew. 

Don’t call it a tree.  Roxy Paine calls these forms dendroids.  Dendroid basically means a branching structure, like a tree or for Roxy, like our veins: “I wanted to illuminate the complex, constant collisions among dendritic structures, man-made circulatory systems, buildings and factories.” In New York Paine’s similar piece, Maelstrom hangs off the edge of the The Metropolitan Museum of Art roof garden.  There the form invites the public to consider the loss of the natural world around them.  But in Raleigh, Askew is a jewel inside of beautifully arranged garden of trees that will surround the museum exstension.

The sculpture rises up from a single trunk base and splits off in branches that segment-by-segment narrow to thin points.  These branches become so narrow, that the ends are hard to see from the ground as they aren’t much thicker than toothpicks. Paine was born in Virginia and like many Southern Artists muses on the transformation of the natural to the man made. 

Askew shines with metallic perfection- the piece was shipped in as 10 separate branches and then Roxy and his team worked to weld the piece together on site. The form was constructed out of heavily altered steel pipes.  We can’t wait to see it among the grove of trees to surround it. Already intense, the contrast of Askew when surrounded in green will be sure to be beyond our expectation. 

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