Re:Spectré

On October 29, 2012, Superstorm Sandy submerged Socrates Sculpture Park, flooding the landscape with over four feet of water. Tragically, the combination of moist soil and high winds destroyed several trees throughout the park.

For his project at Socrates, Anthony Heinz May has resurrected one of those trees, reanimating its trunk through a deconstructing process he calls, ‘pixelating nature.’ The resulting installation is a rearrangement of miniature units, or modules, of the formerly thriving plant that exposes the blurred line between the real and the artificial. Each unit is a regular cube of what was once a whole tree trunk, now delicately placed in a chess-like grid. As each unit builds on the last, a larger form appears that is at once exploding with life and completely artificial.

WATCH ANTHONY DISCUSS HIS WORK