25 Palm Trees in Paradise by Perry Vásquez is a book that is not a book about a tree that is not a tree. These pages offer the viewer a survey of Vásquez’s paintings, created over a ten-year span, during which he explored the palm’s many moods and manifestations, from symbol of leisure life, to towering inferno of camouflaged  tele-communication, to phoenix-like beacon reborn from its own ashes. Writer Mark Dery contributes an essay framing Vasquez’s work in the larger context of how trees became meaningful for the artist and how meaning itself is embedded in the world around us.