EXHIBITED IN "CHIAMATA ALLE ARTI – TERZO PARADISO", A COLLECTIVE PERFORMANCE BY MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO, ORGANIZED BY BAM ARTE IN COLLABORATION WITH THE FONDAZIONE PISTOLETTO CITTADELLARTE
PIAZZA DEL POPOLO, ROME, ITALY
2026
The night before photographing this tree in New York, in the cemetery of Trinity Church in Manhattan, I had been reading The Red Book by Carl Gustav Jung. In this text, Jung reflects on the relationship between the world of dreams, connected to the unconscious, and that of waking consciousness. In one section of the book, he describes a dream in which he was the only person capable of seeing a radiant tree, a vision that he interpreted as a source of meaning and guidance for his life. Jung also believed in the concept of the bush soul, which indicated a connection between the psyche and elements of nature, such as an animal or a tree. In this case, The Golden Tree seems to evoke his connection with Jung, creating a circularity between his dream, the real tree, and the journey of my own soul.
The Golden Tree is part of a larger project, New York Is A Dream Machine, a short film in which I explored the shifting threshold between night and day, following light through the concept of psychogeography: the capacity of environments to influence and expand the possibilities of the mind and imagination. The circular form of the tree in the cemetery also recalls the concept of the mandala. For Jung, the mandala symbolizes the journey of the soul and the cyclical nature of life. In this image, the light surrounding the tree evokes the dream recounted by Jung, transcending the limits of space and time. The Golden Tree thus becomes the symbol of an inner journey, capturing a light that seems to reveal, in the tree's circular form, the cyclical nature of the universe.
watch a clip from the performance on vimeo
