Roxy Paine’s long interest in the juxtaposition of nature and industrialization has brought form to an extensive body of work. From his mushroom and plant fields to his art-making machines and large-scale metal trees, Paine continues to see nature through an industrial prism.

Through work that combines the organic with the manufactured, he questions our position between the man-made world that we control and nature’s world that we do not.

Defunct is a 42-feet-tall stainless steel sculpture of a dead or dying tree infiltrated with fungus. The trunk and limbs have deteriorated from disease or old age. The beauty of the once daunting, vibrant tree is shadowed by the growing rot and shelf fungus. The death of the tree has given life to the fungus.

Defunct, a meditation on loss and life, describes the symbiosis between industry and earth, between production and natural selection.