Even if you didn’t know Chris Burden’s name, you’ve likely seen photos of what has become his most famous work: 202 vintage streetlamps arranged with a military-like precision in front of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
It’s not uncommon to see $4 million worth of art in a museum. It’s less common to see $4 million worth of solid gold bricks in a museum. It’s called Tower of Power, and it will require a 24/7 security guard as long as it remains at the New Museum as part of a retrospective on its maker, the artist Chris Burden.
The minimal facade of The New Museum has been host to some wild installations since it opened in 2007—ranging from a sign reading "HELL, YES!" to a giant long-stemmed rose. Today, workers finished installing the museum's latest outdoor sculpture: A 30-foot-high remote controlled ship by artist Chris Burden.
Four years of work. Exactly 1,100 toy cars. Eighteen lanes of one-way traffic. One mega-mini-city. Meet Metropolis II, the Hot Wheels/Matchbox car utopia created by California artist Chris Burden, lead engineer Zak Cook and ten assistants. [MAKE]
What's it like watching 1,200 toy cars zip around an inconceivably tangled kinetic sculpture, charging and whirring all at once? Like choreographed chaos. Like pure unadulterated joy, tinged with inescapable repetition. Like this.
Over the last year, artist Chris Burden and his assistants have been painstakingly constructing a gigantic 16,000 pound, 65 foot skyscraper using replicated stainless steel Erector set pieces. The work, entitled "What My Dad Gave Me" was inspired by the tall buildings in Manhattan-which is why the piece was carted…
