'Katie Holten: Paths of Desire'

By David Bonetti
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH VISUAL ARTS CRITIC
05/20/2007
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/entertainment/reviews.nsf/art/story/66B94B7FB71124CF862572E0001FB54B?OpenDocument

The tree at the center of Katie Holten's installation at the Contemporary Art Museum is absolutely marvelous. A full-scale replica of a full-grown Missouri flowering dogwood, it fills a large gallery from floor to ceiling, leaving just enough room around the edges for visitors to walk and look at a few framed drawings.
The tree apparently floats, its root system nearly as extensive as its crown, exposed like a raw nerve system. Holten constructed the tree from the trash paper and cardboard generated by the Contemporary during her monthlong residency, covering the branches with black duct tape, shiny and viscous as an oil slick.
Like Roxy Paine's stainless-steel tree installed in Forest Park on the grounds of the St. Louis Art Museum, this is an emblem of a tree in distress. Holten's tree is based on a 1952 photograph of a tree (a Cox's Pippen, to be precise) that was torn from its earthly anchor to be studied by scientists. But if that old photo was about scientific inquiry aimed at adding to our understanding of plant life, Holten's image suggests the tree's unnatural status as a specimen.
Trees are supposed to be rooted in the ground outside, not suspended in a room. Its bark, a thick protective skin, is organic, of a piece with its leaves and flowers, not reminiscent of the petroleum that fuels our wartime economy.

There is something tragic about an uprooted tree, one of nature's noblest creations. But there's something tragic in general about nature in a time of climate change. Holten has found a perfect symbol for the environmental crisis we are experiencing.

The drawings around the perimeter of the gallery don't add much to the strong impression the suspended tree creates. Holten's drawing technique is schematic, imprecise. There are three drawings made of trees of the United States. Others are about mapping — some are maps of imaginary continents based on Holten's chipped black nail polish; others, maps of the world as remembered, continents, countries and bodies of water shrunk or enlarged as misremembered.
The fact that this exhibition, Holten's first solo show in an American museum, is happening at all is something of a miracle. It was originally proposed by Shannon Fitzgerald, who was fired by the Contemporary during the show's planning. No curator is credited with it in its final form. Two other exhibitions planned to coincide with it were canceled.

Another component of the exhibition, the recreation of a prairie planned for an empty lot owned by the Pultizer Foundation for the Arts adjacent to the Bruno David Gallery, was vetoed. It proved impossible to find an alternative site. So, impressive as it is, what we're seeing at the Contemporary is really just part of the intended exhibition.

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