Roland Biermann's new permanent Installation Stations 5 is on view at Parsonage Sculpture Garden, Maine.
Roland Biermann's Stations series began as a contemporary response to the centuries-old Christian tradition of praying the Stations of the Cross during Lent. This religious practice-also known as the Way of the Cross, the Way of Sorrows, or the Via Crucis-grew out of a devotional pilgrimage in Jerusalem, which traced Jesus' final steps through the holy city. It eventually became commemorated in churches as worshippers envisioned themselves following Jesus in fourteen stations from condemnation to entombment. Today, the Stations are liturgical features in most Roman Catholic churches, as well as Anglican, Lutheran, and other Christian denominations.
Inspired by the unique grammar of suffering in the Stations, Biermann set out to find a fresh iconography capable of connecting the traditional Stations to the anguish of contemporary life. Early on in his research, Biermann settled on the key elements and prevailing aesthetic that has come to define the series: bright red oil barrels and metal guardrails, combining sleek minimalism with gritty materiality. The original work, Stations 1, was installed at the Barbican in London, an iconic, Brutalist experiment in postwar community-building, located on the site of some of London's most devastating destruction during the Blitz. The second iteration brought the sculpture to New York City and the grounds of Trinity Wall Street Church, situating the Stations at the nexus of worldly commerce and spiritual praxis. As the series continued to develop in further commissions around the world, including Amsterdam, Biermann began to break the work into pieces both physically and symbolically, experimenting with how its elements might signify disparate traumas and respond to the cultural and physical demands of different locations.
In the latest addition to Biermann's series, Stations 5 for The Parsonage Gallery in Searsport, Maine, the artist continues these site-specific investigations. Its bright red oil barrels evoke "blood being spilt in the pursuit of fossil fuels past and present," Biermann notes. The work was constructed in the summer of 2026, against the backdrop of the United States' war with Iran, which left oil tankers coagulating in the Strait of Hormuz, devastating developing nations dependent on middle eastern oil. The placement of Biermann's barrels-looking out across Penobscot Bay-drives home local connections to the global fossil fuel crisis. Massive fuel depots loom along the shore nearby and hazardous spills at the terminal have disturbed the local ecosystem in recent decades. Meanwhile, fierce debates about Maine's energy future have focused on whether to build wind turbine assembly sites in the area, potentially on or around environmentally protected lands.
Stations 5 (2026)
14 Recycled Oil Barrels, 2 Crash-Impacted Highway Guardrail Beams Steel Platform, 180 x 640 x 180 cm
Text and image courtesy of the artist.
