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Chris Burden

Yin Yang

June 1–August 3, 2007
Beverly Hills

Chris Burden: Yin Yang Installation viewPhoto © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden: Yin Yang

Installation view
Photo © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden: Yin Yang Installation view

Chris Burden: Yin Yang

Installation view

Works Exhibited

Chris Burden, Lotus, 2006 1973 Lotus Europa and 6 Polaroid prints; car: 42 × 152 × 64 inches (106.7 × 386.1 × 162.6 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Lotus, 2006

1973 Lotus Europa and 6 Polaroid prints; car: 42 × 152 × 64 inches (106.7 × 386.1 × 162.6 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Lotus, 2006 1973 Lotus Europa and 6 Polaroid prints; car: 42 × 152 × 64 inches (106.7 × 386.1 × 162.6 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Lotus, 2006

1973 Lotus Europa and 6 Polaroid prints; car: 42 × 152 × 64 inches (106.7 × 386.1 × 162.6 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Bulldozer, 2007 1954 International T6 crawler and 4 Polaroid prints; crawler: 65 × 112 × 54 inches (165.1 × 384.5 × 137.2 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Bulldozer, 2007

1954 International T6 crawler and 4 Polaroid prints; crawler: 65 × 112 × 54 inches (165.1 × 384.5 × 137.2 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Bulldozer, 2007 1954 International T6 crawler and 4 Polaroid prints; crawler: 65 × 112 × 54 inches (165.1 × 384.5 × 137.2 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: © Douglas M. Parker Studio

Chris Burden, Bulldozer, 2007

1954 International T6 crawler and 4 Polaroid prints; crawler: 65 × 112 × 54 inches (165.1 × 384.5 × 137.2 cm); each print: 24 × 20 inches (61 × 50.8 cm)
© 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 an exhibition by Chris Burden. Invited by the gallery to put together a summer show, Burden has responded with a project that poses the ancient concept of yin and yang (which describes two primal opposing but complementary principles or cosmic forces said to be found in all non-static objects and processes in the universe) in relation to his long-standing obsession with machines, motor vehicles, and readymades.

Lotus, a 1973 Lotus Europa sports car, and Bulldozer, an International T6 crawler, both come from Burden’s personal collection of vehicles but they represent polar opposites. Both occupy roughly the same footprint, but the Lotus is very light (1,500 pounds) and the Bulldozer is very heavy (5,000 pounds). A fast and small sports race car, the Lotus brings to mind the conceptual ideal of the perfect race machine: a vehicle designed and built so sparsely that it is the essence of efficiency in that it wins the race, but disintegrates as soon as it crosses the finish line. It is very fragile and totally impractical. Burden rarely drives the Lotus except for taking it out for an occasional exhilarating spin. By contrast, Bulldozer is a heavy-duty farm vehicle, built like an ox—reliable, dense, and chunky. At fifty-three years old (almost the artist’s age), it is slow, yet almost unstoppable. The bulldozer is used in the everyday operations on Burden’s rural property.

Metropolis is a documentary made about Chris Burden’s sculpture of the same name, a vast and intense kinetic model of a frenetic modern city. The model city is crisscrossed by an elaborate system of Hot Wheels car roadways and Monorail train tracks. The noise of the speeding Hot Wheels cars, the continuous flow of the Monorail trains, and the random car crashes that punctuate the traffic din produce in the viewer synesthetic sensations of the real stresses and strains of living in a dynamic and bustling city. One can easily imagine the Lotus being one of the cars in Metropolis.

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.