Pamela Rosenkranz’s Hot Pink Tree Debuts on the High Line
Made of foam-coated steel, Old Tree's branches were also designed to mimic human blood vessels.
Pamela Rosenkranz, Old Tree. High Line Plinth commission, May 2023 to Fall 2024. Foam-coated steel branches. Courtesy the artist and High Line. Photo: Timothy Schenck.
Freshly installed on The Spur of New York's High Line, Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz's luminous coral pink tree stands out against both the natural foliage and the buildings at the intersection of New York's 10th Avenue and 30th Street.
Old Tree (2023) is 7.6-metre-tall with six roots, six limbs, and 145 foam-coated steel branches. Its form mimics the networks of human blood vessels.
Rosenkranz's myriad sculptures, installations, paintings, and videos often use synthetic materials in imitation of nature, raising questions about our relationship to the natural world.
High Line Art's Chief Curator, Cecilia Alemani, noted that Old Tree 'mirrors the High Line's complexities as both a natural landscape and a built structure.'
Once an elevated rail-line serving the city's industries, the High Line was abandoned and later revitalised as a green urban parkway, reclaimed by nature.
The area of the High Line around the sculpture the artist envisions as a social space for people to gather and pause under its shade.
'It's like the central square in a village with a tree and benches around it', Alemani told Artnet News.
'I look forward to seeing how visitors further activate the sculpture,' Rosenkranz added.
Yet-to-be-announced public programming, relating to themes of botany and anthropology, will activate the work while it remains in place.
The pink tree was picked out from 80 proposals presented to the public for the High Line Plinth, a dedicated 18-month rotating public sculpture programme inspired by London's famous Fourth Plinth.
A shortlist of 12 included tree-related proposals by Nick Cave, Lu Pingyuan, Teresita Fernández, and Kapwani Kiwanga, and a giant pigeon by Iván Argote.
Another artwork from this list will be selected for the fourth commission to be installed after Old Tree is felled in 2024.The first two commissions were Simone Leigh's Brick House (2019) and Sam Durant's Untitled (drone) (2021). —[O]
