Press Release--Roxy Paine at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Ferment (2011) being installed in Kansas City, April 2011. Photo: Roxy Paine Studio

James Cohan Gallery
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Roxy Paine: Ferment and “Scumaks and Dendroids”
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Opening April 29, 2011

James Cohan Gallery is pleased to announce the inauguration of Roxy Paine’s Ferment (2011), a new permanent public sculpture installed at the Kansas City Sculpture Park at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO, as well as an exhibition of selected works by the artist opening on April 29 and running through August 28, 2011.

Ferment was commissioned and funded by the Hall Family Foundation in honor of Martin Friedman on the occasion of his retirement as consultant for the Kansas City Sculpture Park over the past 20 years. Embodying a writhing force of nature, it’s movements frozen in time but nevertheless powerfully suggestive, Ferment is one of Paine’s most ambitious sculptures to date from the artist's acclaimed Dendroid series, measuring 58-feet tall and hand-constructed out of 8,600 plate, pipe and rod stainless steel elements that have been hydraulically manipulated, cut, ground and welded into branch-like structures.

Concurrent to the inauguration of Ferment, the Museum is also presenting an exhibition titled Roxy Paine: Scumaks and Dendroids. This exhibition will highlight several of the models that the artist creates in advance of his large-scale Dendroids, including Model for Ferment (2010), all of which operate as blueprints in the creation of the large-scale works. In addition, Paine’s well known sculpture-making machine, Scumak No. 2 (2001), will be on view.

As Eleanor Heartney has written of the machine works: “[They] are designed to demonstrate that the manipulation of a system’s elements and rules can generate an unlimited number of new forms. Generally, the machines mix the languages of statistics, industrial production, or even poetry with that of art to create a visual object.” One can draw a parallel to the conceptual impetus behind Scumak No. 2 and the process behind Ferment and other works in the Dendroid series, as Paine uses both mechanical means and the innate logic of natural forms, such as trees, to create these large-scale works. His meticulous research and observation of a variety of dendritic forms help him to understand these languages, and from there he creates sculptures that are “grown” with logic of their own.

The Kansas City Sculpture Park is a 22-acre oasis of park land in the middle of an urban setting. Designed by internationally recognized architects Dan Kiley and Jaquelin Robertson, the Sculpture Park opened in 1989. It contains over 30 sculptures, primarily from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Roxy Paine: Scumaks and Dendroids is supported by Marti and Tony Oppenheimer, Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation, James E. C. and Elizabeth Tinsman, the Campbell-Calvin Fund and Elizabeth C. Bonner Charitable Trust for exhibitions, and the Rheta A. Sosland Fund.

for a live web-cam view of Ferment.

For more information about Roxy Paine, please contact:
Jane Cohan
James Cohan Gallery
jane@jamescohan.com
(212) 714-9500

For more information about The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Kansas City Sculpture Park, please contact:
Toni Wood or Kathleen Leighton
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
twood@nelson-atkins.org or kleighton@nelson-atkins.org
(816) 751-1321

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