In his 2014 essay “For a Phytocentrism to Come,” philosopher Michael Marder argues, “In a fight against the nefarious legacy of anthropocentrism, the advantage of phytocentrism over the alternatives is in how it interferes with the all-absorbing projection of the anthropos onto the horizons of the world.” Could Aji V.N.’s recent paintings of trees and verdant landscapes be understood as an attempt to upend what Marder calls “the inflation of the human as the measure and standard for other forms of existence?” In the works in his latest solo show, trees were no longer the inconspicuous, marginalized