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Chris Burden

January 20–February 28, 2004
555 West 24th Street, New York

Chris Burden, Tyne Bridge, 2002 Powder coated and made to order Meccano metal toy parts construction parts and wood towers, 372 × 60 × 111 inches (944.9 × 152.4 × 281.9 cm)

Chris Burden, Tyne Bridge, 2002

Powder coated and made to order Meccano metal toy parts construction parts and wood towers, 372 × 60 × 111 inches (944.9 × 152.4 × 281.9 cm)

Chris Burden, Tyne Bridge, 2002 Powder coated and made to order Meccano metal toy parts construction parts and wood towers, 372 × 60 × 111 inches (944.9 × 152.4 × 281.9 cm)

Chris Burden, Tyne Bridge, 2002

Powder coated and made to order Meccano metal toy parts construction parts and wood towers, 372 × 60 × 111 inches (944.9 × 152.4 × 281.9 cm)

Chris Burden, Victoria Falls Bridge, 2003 Stainless steel reproduction Mysto Type I Erector parts and wood base, 24 ¼ × 78 × 8 ¾ inches (61.6 × 198.1 × 22.2 cm), edition of 6© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Victoria Falls Bridge, 2003

Stainless steel reproduction Mysto Type I Erector parts and wood base, 24 ¼ × 78 × 8 ¾ inches (61.6 × 198.1 × 22.2 cm), edition of 6
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Antique Bridge, 2003 Stainless steel reproduction Mysto Type I Erector parts, 25 ½ × 91 ¾ × 8 ¾ inches (64.8 × 233 × 22.2 cm), edition of 6© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Antique Bridge, 2003

Stainless steel reproduction Mysto Type I Erector parts, 25 ½ × 91 ¾ × 8 ¾ inches (64.8 × 233 × 22.2 cm), edition of 6
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

About

Gagosian is pleased to present its upcoming exhibition of Chris Burden’s recent works. On view will be the Tyne Bridge (2002), a thirty-one-foot-long scale replica of the single-span bridge erected in 1928 across the Tyne River in northern England, as well as two Tyne Bridge Kits (2003), each of which includes the 151,000 parts necessary to potentially construct Burden’s bridge. The monumental Curved Bridge (2003) will also be exhibited, along with several smaller-scale bridges.

Tyne Bridge comprises 200,000 steel parts that have been cast from Meccano model toy pieces and coated with green paint to match the patina of the original bridge. Since 1997, Burden has built a series of scaled reproductions of bridges using parts from Meccano and Erector engineering sets, popular children’s toys during the last century. Tyne Bridge is the sixth of this series and was commissioned for the opening of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, England, the home of the original Tyne Bridge. Curved Bridge, which does not reference an actual bridge, is an equally dramatic form that similarly tests the aesthetic and mechanical boundaries of its model parts.

Born in Boston in 1946, Burden studied architecture, physics, and visual art at the University of California. He completed a series of performance pieces in the 1970s that engaged his own body, often in a violent manner, as part of his conceptual art practice. In recent years, Burden has noted that “my work has gone from dealing with personal issues of power to external issues of power.” His appreciation of well-engineered structures, coupled with a fascination with technology, has led to Burden’s rendering of several fantasy societies in a reduced scale, including Medusa’s Head (1990) and Pizza City (1996). Uniting his performances and sculptures in a body of work that invites human interaction, Burden’s bridges function as inquiries into the nature of architecture and technology, while instigating a dialogue between human beings and scientific progress.

Image of American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, Sydney Stutterheim

In Conversation
American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim on Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden

Join Gagosian to celebrate the publication of Poetic Practical: The Unrealized Work of Chris Burden with a conversation between American Artist, Yayoi Shionoiri, and Sydney Stutterheim presented at the Kitchen, New York. Considering the book’s sustained examination of sixty-seven projects that remained incomplete at the time of Burden’s death in 2015, the trio discuss the various ways that an artist’s work and legacy live on beyond their lifetime.

Photograph of the installation process of an unrealized performance by Chris Burden at the Newport Harbor Art Museum, California, 1974. Photo: Brian Forrest, courtesy Michael Auping

At the Edge
Chris Burden: Prelude to a Lost Performance

Michael Auping tells the Quarterly’s Alison McDonald about the preparations for a performance by Chris Burden at the Newport Harbor Art Museum in Southern California in 1974—and the event’s abrupt cancellation—providing a glimpse into the mindset of a young, aggressive, and ambitious artist in the early stages of his career.

Takashi Murakami cover and Andreas Gursky cover for Gagosian Quarterly, Summer 2022 magazine

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2022

The Summer 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, with two different covers—featuring Takashi Murakami’s 108 Bonnō MURAKAMI.FLOWERS (2022) and Andreas Gursky’s V & R II (2022).

Chris Burden, model for the installation Xanadu as proposed to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2008. Photo: Joel Searles

Chris Burden: Poetic Practical

A new publication exploring the work that Chris Burden conceived but left unrealized delves into his archive to present sixty-seven visionary projects that reveal the aspirations of this formidable artist. The book’s editors, Sydney Stutterheim and Andie Trainer, discuss its development with Yayoi Shionoiri, executive director of the Chris Burden Estate.

Chris Burden: Big Wrench

Gagosian Quarterly Films
Chris Burden: Big Wrench

From January 23 to February 21, 2019, Gagosian Quarterly presented a special online screening of Chris Burden’s 1980 video Big Wrench.

Big Wrench

Big Wrench

Sydney Stutterheim looks at the brief but feverish obsession behind this 1980 video by Chris Burden.