Jessica Martin
Jessica Martin is a contributor to the Brooklyn Rail.
It was early November when I came across Álvaro Urbano’s exhibition TABLEAU VIVANT at SculptureCenter. Walking into the installation, I felt as though the wind had dragged the city’s debris into the interior space of the gallery.
The tree is the perfect architectural metaphor, stripped to its parts; it resembles the fundamental analogy of a building’s elements: roof, structure, footings: canopy, trunk, roots. The tree feels the same pressures as a building. To create shade, to create enclosure, to find the sun, to stand in the wind and stay dry in a flood. The lessons from trees are as present today as ever, they are living fossils of the past and insights into our future.
