Michael Neff
Suspended Forest

Artist Michael Neff brings Suspended Forest, a room-filling forest of discarded Christmas trees collected from the streets of Brooklyn, to Knockdown Center for the month of January.

This site-specific installation takes a different form than previous incarnations, which took place outdoors under a highway overpass in Brooklyn, in a space fenced off from the public. Neff has addressed the space at Knockdown Center by hanging a grid of 40 trees, which almost fills the room, yet leaves enough space between rows for viewers to walk amongst the trees, setting them gently spinning. The indoor venue and extended period of exhibition allow time for needles from the trees to collect below them, forming an echo of the trees on the floor below. The enclosed space also allows scent of pine to remain, a more pleasant experience than the scents of Metropolitan Avenue.

Previous installations of the piece took place under the BQE in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 2012 and 2013. Those were mounted in an unauthorized, unused space under the highway, fenced off from the busy foot traffic along Metropolitan Avenue. Suspended single file below a drain pipe that ran the full width of the highway, those installations were removed by the city within days.

The 2016 installation took two days to hang, and is composed primarily of trees that went unsold by local Christmas tree vendors.

Special thanks to Mark Shortliffe, Shannon Murphy, Rich Watts, Natalie Fevig, Jason Huff, Anna Martin, Sonya German, and the staff at Knockdown Center for making this project a success.