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Chris Burden, Metropolis II, 2010, Installation view, three 1/2 hp DC motors with motor controllers, 12,000 custom manufactured die-cast cars (1,100 for operating, 10,900 for replenishing damaged cars), 26 HO-scale train sets with controllers and tracks (13 for operating, 13 for replenishing damages), steel, aluminum, shielded copper wire, copper sheet, brass, various plastics, assorted woods and manufactured wood products, Legos, Lincoln Logs, Dado Cubs, glass, ceramic and natural stone tiles, acrylic and oil-base paints, rubber, sundry adhesives, 9' 9" (H) x 28' 3" (W) x 19' 2" (D), Courtesy of the Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Foundation, © Chris Burden, Photo © 2012 Museum Associates/LACMA.

Chris Burden and Metropolis II, a Kinetic Future at a Breakneck Pace

Los Angles County Museum of Art
5905 Wilshire Boulevard (at Fairfax Avenue)
323-857-6000
Los Angeles
Broad Contemporary Art Museum
First Floor
Metropolis II
Opens January 14, 2012

Created by artist Chris Burden, Metropolis II (2010) is a complex, large-scale kinetic sculpture modeled after a fast-paced modern city. The armature of the piece is constructed of steel beams, forming an eclectic grid interwoven with an elaborate system of eighteen roadways, including a six-lane freeway, train tracks, and hundreds of buildings. 1,100 miniature toy cars speed through the city at 240 scale miles per hour on the specially designed plastic roadways. Every hour, the equivalent of approximately 100,000 cars circulates through the sculpture.

Situated in the center of the grid are three electrically powered conveyor belts, each studded with magnets at regular intervals. The magnets on the conveyor belt and those on the toy cars attract, enabling the cars to travel to the top of the sculpture without physical contact between the belt and cars. At the top, the cars are released one at a time and race down the roadways, weaving in and out of the structure, simulating rapid traffic and congestion.

Burden says of the installation, "Metropolis II is an intense and complex kinetic sculpture, modeled after a fast-paced, frenetic modern city. It refers specifically to Los Angeles, but an idealized Los Angeles of the future where traffic flows at ten times the rate it does now — i.e., a 50-minute trip becomes a five-minute trip. The buildings are not modeled after any specific structures, but are meant to represent an eclectic and modern architecture. The noise, the continuous flow of the trains, and the speeding toy cars, produce in the viewer the stress of living in a dynamic, active, and bustling 21st century city."

Metropolis II is on long-term loan to LACMA, thanks to the generosity of LACMA Trustee Nicolas Berggruen. Beginning January 14, 2012, the work will be on view on the first floor of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) and run on weekends during at scheduled times.

Chris Burden is a leading international artist who works and lives in Los Angeles. Over the past 40 years, Burden has produced a multitude of assemblages, installations, scientific models, and kinetic and static sculptures, including Urban Light at LACMA.

He has performed and exhibited his work internationally, at institutions including Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; de Appel, Amsterdam; The Tate Museum, London; The Baltic Centre, Newcastle, England; The 48th Venice Biennale, Venice; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Conceptual Art, San Francisco; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial, New York.

Burden produced his first mature works during the early 1970s. His work was characterized by the idea that the truly important, viable art of the future would not be with objects; the things that you could simply sell and hang on your wall. Instead art would be ephemeral and address political, social, environmental, and technological change. Earth, performance, body, video, computer, narrative, and conceptual art became the new mediums. Burden, with his shockingly simple, unforgettable, “here and now” performances shook the conventional art world during this period and took this new art form to its extreme.

The images of Burden that resonate in the public mind are of a young man who had himself shot (Shoot, 1971), electrocuted (Doorway to Heaven, 1973), cut (Through the Night Softly, 1973), drowned (Velvet Water, 1974), and locked up (Five Day Locker Piece, 1971).

Chris Burden was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1946. He moved to California in 1965 and obtained a BFA at Pomona College, Claremont, California in 1969, and later a MFA at the University of California, Irvine in 1971. He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He taught at UCLA for 26 years and is currently a professor emeritus at UCLA.