Helen Mayer & Newton Harrison When Hope Is Not Enough for Art

Hyperallergic Sep 23, 2024

As the elevator doors open out to the Whitney Museum’s top floor, 18 living citrus trees come into view. The installation, a reprisal of Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s project Survival Piece #5: Portable Orchard (1972/2024), appears bright and airy but also regimented. The trees — growing varieties of lemons and limes, oranges and grapefruits — have been organized into a three-by-six grid, each tree situated inside a planter made from reclaimed redwood. With their clean geometry and overhead grow lights, the planters resemble indoor gardening kits purchased at a big box store. It’s an aesthetic that’s at once visually harmonious and conceptually discordant, a calm and orderly response to the dystopian possibilities of climate upheaval.

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