Weight Gain in Trees (Gewichtstoename bij bomen)

About this artwork.

A wooden pot in which a tree has been planted "hangs" from heavy springs in a metal construction. The pot has subsided as the weight of the tree has increased in recent years. It is not for nothing that the title of the work of art is Weight gain in trees. In this sculpture, artist Sjef Meijman searches for the chemical processes that cause the growth of the tree, thereby more or less following in the footsteps of the 17th century Flemish alchemist, physiologist and physician Jan Baptista van Helmont, who carried out the same kind of weighing experiments with a willow in an earthen jar, in order to ascertain the growth factors in the chemical process. 

Sjef Meijman has a great fascination for man's basic relationship with his environment, for the symbiotic processes in nature, in short: for all kinds of natural interaction. 
In Weight gain in trees there is interaction between the artwork and its surroundings (sun, light, water) and thus the sculpture becomes part of a natural process.

Facts & Figures.

• Design
  Sjef Meijman

• District
  Oosterparkwijk

• Year of creation
  2018

• Art type
  Freestanding sculpture

• Material
  Wood, Metal, Tree