"Map"

The work that intrigued me the most at the Hirshhorn Museum was Evan Holloway's "Map". The piece was constructed using mostly tree branches, but it hardly looks natural at all. The branches are all connected at 90 degree angles, giving the overall design a very organized feel. "Map" immediately stuck out to me, because I really enjoy works that transform reality.

The work is both simple and complex. It's described as having a logical construction, which you can see from the uniformity of angles in the work. However, as the colors "evolve" from grayscale into all sorts of hues, the twigs branch out into a more complex structure. Gray lines become colorful chaos, all in a neat little box.

The lines aren't absolutely perfect, which is how it retains a sense of nature. The work was meant to critique how humans twist nature into their own man-made structure. Up close, the work does remind me of the colorful web-like structure of the DC Metro system. I can certainly appreciate Holloway's meaning, having lived in a city where every piece of nature is part of a larger urban grid.