Chris Burden

American, 1946–2015

From his action-based works of the 1970s to the jaw-dropping technical feats of his later sculptures, Chris Burden consistently challenged his mental and physical limitations, reflecting on the surreal and precarious realities of contemporary life. Burden was a radical and uncompromising figure with a fierce political consciousness.

Burden earned his M.F.A in 1971 from the University of California, Irvine, studying under conceptual artist Robert Irwin. Like Irwin, whose site-specific architectural interventions consider the effects of space and light on the viewer, Burden explored the staging of spectacle and how art could complicate one’s understanding of the material world. In his early performances, such as Five Day Locker Piece (1971) and Shoot (1971), he would put his body at risk responding to the violent realities of the Vietnam War.

In the late 1970s Burden shifted to monumental sculpture, examining power, speed and balance. The Big Wheel (1979) featured a revved motorcycle driving a massive flywheel. His industrial explorations continued with Beam Drop (1984/2008), where I beams were dropped into wet concrete, and Medusa’s Head (1990), a chaotic mass evoking geological destruction.

In 2000 Burden began collecting vintage streetlamps, culminating in Urban Light (2008), a permanent installation of 202 lampposts at Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He also built large-scale bridge models using toy construction parts—including Tower of London Bridge (2003) and Three Arch Dry Stack Bridge (2013), which was featured in a retrospective at the New Museum in New York. His final work, Ode to Santos Dumont (2015), was a kinetic airship inspired by early aviation, blending industrial ambition with childlike wonder.

Burden was the first artist to be represented by Larry Gagosian, beginning in 1978.

Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery