Symbiosis

I recently visited this public sculpture for my VLST class, and am currently figuring out how to put my own twist on its design for an assignment. Located on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and the intersection of 24^th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue (Iroquois Park), what looks like a broken silver tree stands at 34 feet tall. This piece of public art was created by artist Roxy Paine in 2011, and installed in 2014. Constructed from industrial pipes, plates and rods, as well as stainless steel and schedule 40 pipe, the hand-fabricated 3.5 ton piece is strikingly lifelike. “Symbiosis” is currently owned by the Association for Public Art. The sculpture connects traces of nature and humanity with themes like technology, industry, support, and interdependence, as well as evokes the demonstration of a tenuous relationship. As a part of Paine’s “Dendroid” collection, “Symbiosis” “represents the collision of two dendroids that result in a stasis, a questionable relationship that teeters between support and detriment.” The piece was listed in Best of Philly’s “Best Public Art” in 2014. The piece is meant to be a “place for gathering or a moment of quiet contemplation in the midst of frenetic urban life.”