Pamela Rosenkranz: Old Tree

High Line Art, which organizes public art programming and installations displayed along the High Line, announces that acclaimed Swiss artist Pamela Rosenkranz’s vivid sculpture Old Tree is now on view as the third High Line Plinth commission. Changing every 18 months, the Plinth is one of the only sites in New York City for artists to realize large-scale contemporary artworks. Old Tree is on display on the High Line, over the intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street, through fall 2024. 

Newly installed on the Spur, Old Tree is a vibrant 25-foot-tall pink and red sculpture made of man-made materials. Old Tree was among 80 proposals shared with the public in 2020, with many people remarking during the commenting period on the excitement and optimism that the work evokes. Rosenkranz’s commission follows Sam Durant’s Untitled (drone), installed in 2021, and Simone Leigh’s Brick House, which inaugurated the Plinth program in 2019.

Old Tree is a vibrant pink and red sculpture that animates myriad historical archetypes of the tree of life that connects heaven and earth. With its striking colors and form, the sculpture resembles the branching systems of organs, blood vessels, and tissue of the human body, inviting viewers to consider the indivisible connection between human and plant life. Old Tree evokes metaphors for the ancient wisdom of human evolution as well as a future in which the synthetic has become nature. On the High Line—a contemporary urban park built on a relic of industry—Old Tree raises questions about what is truly “artificial” or “natural” in our world. Standing in stark contrast to the buildings around it, the work provides a social space, creating shade while casting an ever-changing, luminous aura amid New York’s changing seasons. The exhibition of Old Tree on the High Line will be activated by public programming around themes of botany and anthropology, with more details to be announced. 

Pamela Rosenkranz creates sculptures, paintings, videos, and installations that reflect on the human need to anthropomorphize our surroundings in order to understand them. In doing so, she investigates the codes through which people give meaning to the natural world. Her projects center synthetic materials created in the image of nature: a swimming pool filled with viscous fluid, collections of mineral water bottles filled with silicone, or a kitchen faucet streaming water colored with E131 “sky blue” synthetic dye. Color is paramount for Rosenkranz, who employs fabricated colors intended to reflect unblemished and idealized nature. She elaborates on the condition of the body as a malleable system. Questioning the worldview that centers human beings, Rosenkranz addresses our relentless attempts to domesticate and tame the other living beings around us, as well as our own bodies. 

Old Tree’s installation precedes the opening of the Moynihan – High Line Connector later in Spring 2023. The location of the Plinth on the High Line’s Spur is adjacent to the forthcoming pathway that will lead pedestrians over 30th Street and Dyer Avenue towards Moynihan Train Hall.