DavidByrne.com - Tree Drawings / Arboretum

Tree Drawings / Arboretum

Drawing/diagrams (mostly) in the form of trees, which both elucidate and obsfucate the roots of contemporary phenomena and terminology. Sort of like borrowing the evolutionary tree format and applying it to other, often incompatible, things. In doing so a kind of humorous disjointed scientism of the mind heaves into view.

Published by McSweeney's as Arboretum in 2006: Straight from the sketchbook, smudges and all, plus a four-foot foldout guide. It’s an eclectic blend of faux science, automatic writing, satire, and an attempt to find connections where none were thought to exist—a sort of self-therapy, allowing the hand to say what the voice cannot. Irrational logic, it’s sometimes called. The application of logical scientific rigor and form to basically irrational premises. To proceed, carefully and deliberately, from nonsense, with a straight face, often arriving at a new kind of sense. The world keeps opening up, unfolding, and just when we expect it to be closed—to be a sealed, sensible box—it shows us something completely surprising.

Click on any thumbnail for more pictures.

Arboretum

Arboretum Tree Drawings

Music Tree, 2002

SECCA Installation, 2003

BOOK: ARBORETUM

• Published by McSweeney's, August 2006
• Hardcover; 192pp, 7x9", 14-pp gatefold; Pencil drawings & essays/addenda
• ISBN: 1-932416-57-9; $24 U.S. $28 Canada; Printed at Tien Wah Press, Singapore
• Design: DB + Danielle Spencer

ARBORETUM AWARDS:

• (2007) AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers of 2006
• 2007 Independent Publisher Book Award gold medal (Popular Culture / Leisure)

ABOUT:

• "End Product: The Book I Drew", Print, 11-12.06
• "In the Modern World", Dwell, 11.06
• Studio 360, 9.15.06
• "David Byrne – Arboretum", Paste, 9.06
• "Why?", DB, 2005

EXHIBITION HISTORY (DRAWINGS):

• Deaf 2: From the Audible to the Visible, Galerie Frank Elbaz, Paris, France, September 8 – October 13, 2007 (Group)

• Notes on Utopia, Maya Stendhal Gallery, New York, NY, March 1 – April 28, 2007 (Group)

• Trees, Tombstones and Bullet Points, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, September 25, 2004 – February 6, 2005 (Solo)

• What is It?, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC, July 19 – September 26, 2003 (Solo)

• David Byrne, Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, NY, March 6 – April 26, 2003 (Solo)

PURCHASE:

• Tree drawings from Pace/MacGill Gallery
• Arboretum from McSweeney's or Amazon

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