Chris Burden’s Ambitious Exterior Installations at New Museum

His first major exhibition in the U.S. in more than 25 years, Chris Burden brings an expansive presentation to the New Museum that occupies all five floors of the museum and features ambitious installations assembled on the museum’s exterior.

“Chris Burden: Extreme Measures,” on view now through Jan. 12, 2014, offers insight into the ways the artist examines the breaking point of materials, institutions and himself. As one of the most important American artists to emerge since 1970, this exhibition presents a selection of the artist’s work where physical and moral limits are called into question.

Chris Burden, Twin Quasi Legal Skyscrapers, 2013. Photo: Charlotte Burns, theartnewspaper.com

As part of the exhibition, two of Burden’s iconic works have been installed on the exterior of the New Museum, altering the visual landscape of Lower Manhattan.

• Twin Quasi Legal Skyscrapers (2013), each measuring 36-feet in height, sits atop the museum and speaks of the constantly evolving nature of the urban landscape while also evoking the lost Twin Towers.

• Ghost Ship (2005), a 30-foot double-ended vessel originally designed to sail a 400-mile unmanned voyage guided by computer, hangs on the museum’s facade.

Burden’s exterior sculptures will remain on view for a year as part of the New Museum’s ongoing Façade Sculpture Program.

Ask Chris Burden and exhibition organizer Lisa Phillips about “Chris Burden: Extreme Measures” at this one-time conversation:

• Nov. 13 at the New Museum at 7 p.m.

More about Chris Burden: Extreme Measures

At the New Museum, the exhibition will feature a selection of Burden’s work focused on  marvels of engineering, such as buildings, vehicles, war machines, and bridges, consistently engaging with the representation of masculinity and the destructive potential latent in engineering pursuits.

Since the early 1980s, Burden has used materials common to childhood playtime activities (such as action figures, toy trains, and construction models) to create miniaturized yet monumental models of buildings and environments.

The Big Wheel (1979), a pivotal early work, marks the artist’s transition from performance to sculpture and is a 6,000-pound cast-iron fly wheel that becomes activated by a motorcycle. When the motorcycle is accelerated at full throttle, the fly wheel spins to a  maximum speed of 200 revolutions per minute.

The exhibition is organized by Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director, with Massimiliano Gioni, Associate Director and Director of Exhibitions, and Jenny Moore, Former Associate Curator.

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