CHRIS BURDEN
Metropolis II
2010
Metropolis II is hard for a viewer to miss, and equally challenging to forget once you have visited it. If the scale and solo exhibition room doesn't catch one's attention, then the sound and whizzing kinetics within the piece certainly will. Chris Burden constructed a miniature city where over 100,000 toy cars are pulled up an ever-rotating conveyor belt before traversing 18 roadways at approximately 240 "scale" mph. When I viewed the piece this summer, I found something hypnotic about the scale, the speed, the noise, and the similarity it had to my own, often hectic, urban lifestyle. The piece is a marvel of engineering, just like any actual-sized city. The viewer can immediately understand the complexity of the building process and have a respect for the dedication of the artist's creative use of technology to create a whirring, juggernaut of an art installation. Burden often pushed boundaries in his work through attention-grabbing pieces, first through his shocking and often dangerous performance art, and later through his large-scale installations. Examples such as Urban Light, 2008, a sculptural army of repurposed street lamps, which illuminate at dusk through solar power, and Ghost Ship, 2005, where a self-navigating ship, run without crew, sailed for five days, demonstrate Burden's interest in using technology and engineering to continue his origins of art that feels alive and performative. His use of technology first demands the attention of his audience, and then demands their consideration of the subject of his work. Metropolis II immediately related to the chaos I experienced daily in Los Angeles - the stress, the noise, the number of vehicles. While living in it, it is harder to have perspective than looking onto it; seeing it in miniature before me allowed me to marvel at the engineering, but also see the danger of ever-growing urban populations that demand an entirely man-made, dizzying landscape, with little room to breathe, and few moments of peace and quiet.
View Metropolis II in motion
References:
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/metropolis-ii
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Burden
https://www.theartstory.org/artist-burden-chris-artworks.htm#pnt_6
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