Jay Sylvester: Nature’s Tax

Art-in-Buildings is pleased to present Nature’s Tax, an exhibition by Jay Sylvester at 55 Fifth Avenue.

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.” —Wendell Berry 

What does the Earth take from us for what we have done to it? When the gears of human “progress” grind to a halt, and the last light dims from the vestiges of a dying power grid, what will the Earth reclaim in its slow, cold, methodical embrace?

Commissioned specifically for this space, “Nature’s Tax” is constructed from materials foraged from the forests and fields of Long Island surrounding the artist’s studio.

The work emerges as a primal reaction to the clean lines and smooth white surface of this man-made wall. Its physicality is rooted in the tension between organic disorder and human control—the untamed forms of nature pressing against, inhabiting, and ultimately challenging the boundaries imposed upon them. 

This series of assemblages occupies the threshold between construction and decay, suggesting that what we perceive as permanence may be only temporary, and that nature’s reclamation is not a question of whether, but when.

Jay Sylvester spent his youth immersed in the forests and fields of New England, where he built elaborate, mildly dangerous forts and secret shelters for his friends. This early impulse toward primitive world-building set him on an artistic path that would resurface decades later as a central theme of his practice. While studying at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in the 1980s, Sylvester shifted his focus to the urban landscape, mining the city’s discarded ephemera and detritus as both material and subject. His practice evolved through a sustained engagement with processes of accumulation, transformation, and renewal.

Coming full circle, Sylvester now divides his time between his studios on rural Long Island and in California’s Coachella Valley, drawing materials and inspiration from the distinct ecologies of each landscape.

Throughout his practice, Sylvester explores the existential complexity of humanity’s relationship with the natural world: the hubristic desire to control what is ultimately too vast to comprehend; the inevitability of entropy; the acceptance of mortality; and the enduring tension between oneness and separateness.

Image: Jay Sylvester, Nature’s Tax, 2026, 96” x 228” x 6”, Wild Wisteria, Bittersweet, Honeysuckle vines, reclaimed picket fencing and cotton twine. Courtesy of Jay Sylvester Studio.

Jay Sylvester: Nature’s Tax is curated by Tessa Ferreyros and sponsored by Time Equities Inc. (TEI) Art-in-Buildings. TEI is committed to enriching the experience of our properties through the Art-in-Buildings Program, an innovative approach that brings contemporary art by emerging and mid-career artists to non-traditional exhibition spaces in the interest of promoting artists, expanding the audience for art, and creating a more interesting environment for our building occupants, residents, and guests.

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