This work represents Lagos in a nutshell: the tree and its resulting paper; culture and nature perfect synchronized. As Lagos said during an artist talk on Saturday, it takes a lot of hard work for us to keep our cities’ walls and buildings standing. It’s not only human work, though — our forests and plants play their very own, quite crucial part in keeping our modern world running.

Although Lagos might not be saying anything earth-shatteringly new, the way he presents his ideas is earth-shatteringly original in its clever simplicity. His work is so accessible that you can see a piece like the one described above and instantly understand Lagos’ point.

Another example of this is an installation of books that Lagos displays against a wall in The Department.The books are stacked in an arc, with one pencil placed expertly in the leaves of each book. The stack is compiled completely of architectural books, and the whole thing would tumble to the ground if even one pencil were removed. I don’t have enough room here to go through all of the different meanings that are conveyed by this work, but, the tenuous relationship between man ‘s rendering of structure and the materials that man uses to construct comes to mind, for one.