Roxy Paine Sculpture to be Unveiled at the Saint Louis Art Museum
Saint Louis Art Museum
1 Fine Arts Drive
Forest Park
St. Louis, MO 63110
314.721.0072
Image: Roxy Paine at work on his 50-foot-tall tree-shaped sculpture commissioned for the Saint Louis Art Museum. Photo courtesy John Wooten Moore, Jr.
On Thursday, September 9, the Saint Louis Art Museum will unveil the latest addition to its contemporary art collection: Placebo, a fifty-foot-tall, stainless steel tree-shaped sculpture by American artist Roxy Paine. Placebo is the first outdoor sculpture to be commissioned for the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Roxy Paine will give an interview and answer questions during a public program in the Museum’s auditorium beginning at 6:30 pm on September 9. This event is free and open to the public. Following the interview, the audience will be invited to view the sculpture on the west lawn of the Museum.
Over the past decade, Roxy Paine (born 1966) has developed a sophisticated mode of expression that explores the divide between nature and artifice. One of the most influential young artists working in New York today, Roxy Paine’s art combines intellectual rigor, virtuosic craftsmanship, and sly humor. Roxy Paine’s diverse body of work includes machines for making paintings and sculpture as well as trompe l’oeil fields of mushrooms and plants naturalistically rendered in polymers and paint.
Placebo is part of a series of unique tree sculptures, each one designed for specific sites including locations in Central Park, New York; Wanas Foundation, Knislinge, Sweden; Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo NMAC, Cadiz, Spain; and the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado. Placebo began as a fifty-inch-tall model, which was scaled up to the final fifty-foot-tall sculpture. In conjunction with the dedication of the sculpture, the model will be on view in Gallery 339.
Roxy Paine has exhibited internationally, with recent solo shows at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston and the Musee d’Art Americain, Giverny, France. His work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions in venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
This sculpture was commissioned by the Saint Louis Art Museum with funds given in memory of John Wooten Moore.
