You could see Philippe Handford’s weird tree sculptures as somber reflections on life and the natural world and blah blah blah trees are alive, man. That’s fair, but really, this art is kind of funny too.
Imagine walking down a trail in northern England and stumbling upon this tree. I kind of want to talk to it: “What are you doing tree? Taking a nap? Stand up straight! Oh, you’re dead.” Or it was dead, until Handford brought it back to life, using steel brackets to freeze the sliced up trunk in the air.
As the artist and designer told My Modern Met back in December, reuniting the tree with the stump is supposed to evoke a sense of perpetual motion. You hardly notice minimal brackets. Indeed, the whole thing looks organic, like there’s no human handiwork at all. The resulting fluid curve makes it feel like the tree is just going to spring back up. This tree didn’t die, man, it’s just chilling. [Handford Design and Flickr via My Modern Met and Laughing Squid]
