Fascination with tree life comes to the fore at Art Basel Miami Beach '09

Dealers at Art Basel Miami Beach have seeded their booths with so much tree- and plant-based art that touring the aisles can resemble a nature walk at times. The woody works include (clockwise from top left): the Colombian artist Miler Lagos’s Mayan tree of life, Semillias Mágicas, 2006, on Guerrero’s stand (J22); Jorge Mayet’s Abriendo Caminos, 2009, at Horrach Moya (J45); Giuseppe Penone’s Foglie di Zucche, a 1982 bronze tree trunk at Marian Goodman (F4); and Pierre Malphette’s Un Arbre Blanc, 2009, a neon bulb-bedecked tree-shaped sculpture at Kamel Mennour (E1). Enrique Guerrero, director of Guerrero, compared the number of trees at the fair to the more typical proliferation of images of naked women. “It’s an attractive image,” he says. “Trees are incredibly beautifully shaped things.” Kristin Marberger, an associate director of Mezzanin, which boasted its own arboreal feature, Mandla Reuter’s real tree, The Live Oak, 2009, summed things up: “It’s an easy way to pep people up. They make you happy.”