It’s like no tree you’ve ever seen. That’s because the nine-ton polished stainless steel sculpture called Ferment is not a real living, breathing tree, despite tendril-like branches and its botanical surroundings.
Rising 56 feet into the air with a polished steel system of branches that span 35 feet, artist Roxy Paine’s sculpture is organic and mechanical all at the same time.
“It’s sort of shocking when you first see it,” says Serena Federman, a museum visitor strolling around the sculpture garden. “But I like it. It’s unexpected.”
Composed of cylindrical steel pipes and rods of varying size all welded together, Paine’s shiny silver construct was specifically commissioned for the museum’s sculpture garden. It was a gift by the Hall Family Foundation in honor of longtime Nelson-Atkins art consultant Martin Friedman’s retirement in 2011.
The name Ferment is taken from the literal definition of ferment: to be in a state of agitation or intense activity. Paine’s tree can be seen twisting and moving, almost as if it’s struggling to live within the confines of its metal armor.
Paine has created dozens of massive outdoor sculptures similar to Ferment, and he calls them dendroids, a term that refers to anything that involves branching systems, including trees. Paine has been quoted as saying “calling them trees is selling them short.” They are so much more, he says.
Paine says his work examines the complex relationship between nature, technology and human experiences, something he became curious about when playing in the untamed nature just outside the prim and proper suburban housing developments he grew up in.
“All of Roxy Paine’s work addresses the relationship between what occurs naturally and that which is technologically produced,” Jan Schall, the Nelson’s curator of modern and contemporary art, said at the time of installation.
Getting the sculpture to Kansas City from the artist’s New York studio was a feat in itself. Paine designed and created the sculpture in pieces before it was shipped via several flatbed trucks to KC.
To ready the outdoor museum location, roads and pads had to be built in order to get the sculpture to the South Lawn and then to the location at the top of the hill. Nine rock anchors were drilled 30 feet into the bedrock, and 36,000 pounds of concrete formed a foundation to support the massive sculpture.
Ferment, Roxy Paine, 2011. Stainless steel. Purchase: Acquired in honor of Martin Friedman and his critical role in the development of the Kansas City Sculpture Park through a gift from the Hall Family Foundation. Copyright Roxy Paine
