Moon Tree, 1996
Wood, paper, plastic
ΕΜΣΤ Collection
Presented as part of the D.Daskalopoulos Collection Gift
For more than three decades, Gabriel Orozco has explored the fragile equilibrium that governs the universe: gravity, growth, erosion, mutation, and chance. Across sculpture, photography, installation, and drawing, Orozco consistently investigates the unstable boundary between the natural and the manufactured world. This oscillation between nature and artefact is central to his practice, and particularly evident in one of his iconic works, Moon Tree. Here, Orozco condenses these concerns into an uncanny and deceptively simple gesture. The work presents an artificial tree whose synthetic leaves and branches imitate nature while simultaneously exposing their own falseness. The tree is at once familiar and alien: an emblem of life transformed into an object, stripped of biological vitality but retaining its symbolic presence. The artificial tree becomes a metaphor for a world in which authentic contact with nature is increasingly rare, substituted by replicas, images, and controlled environments.
The work seems to suggest that today one is perhaps more likely to encounter a fake plant than a real one — a chilling reflection on the progressive destruction and commodification of the natural environment. The object itself appears suspended between life and simulation, as if nature has already become a distant memory reproduced through industrial means. Nearly three decades after its creation, Moon Tree resonates with even greater urgency in the context of the global ecological crisis. Climate collapse, deforestation, pollution, and unchecked urban expansion have intensified the sense of estrangement between human beings and the ecosystems that sustain them. What may once have appeared ironic or poetic in Orozco’s work now reads as prophetic. The artificial tree no longer feels like a surreal intervention, but rather a plausible monument to a future in which nature survives only as simulation. This tension becomes especially poignant in Athens, where relentless urban development and the ever-expanding concrete landscape continue to erode public greenery and natural space. Within the city’s dense architecture and rising temperatures, Moon Tree acquires an even more ominous tone. The work mirrors the experience of contemporary urban life, where fragments of nature persist only precariously amid asphalt, glass, and cement. In this setting, Orozco’s artificial tree appears less like an artwork and more like a warning: a reminder of what is vanishing, and of the increasingly artificial conditions through which nature may soon be experienced.
Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962 in Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He lives and works between Paris, Tokyo, Mexico City and New York.
