photo: KIOKU Keizo
Metropolis
| Artist | Chris BURDEN |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Material/ Technique | mixed media |
| Size/ Duration | H217 × W496 × D333cm |
| Copyright Notice | © Chris BURDEN / Licensed by the Chris Burden Estate |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2005（作品購入年月日：2005/03/31） |
| Description | Born in Boston, USA in 1946. Died in Topanga in 2015. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Burden has presented radical performance art. He became widely known for ＜Shoot＞ (1971), his performance piece in which he had a friend shoot him in the arm. He is also influential as a conceptual artist, taking up wealth, power and military forces as the subject matter. He has also produced many large-scale three-dimensional works, such as ＜Medusa’s Head＞ (1990), in which complicated urban components are tangled into a massive orb that is over 4m in diameter. "Metropolis" condenses a sense of contemporary cities into the word ‘transportation’ and ‘speed.’ Miniature cars race at hectic speeds along a complicated curving roadway made of plastic, while slow moving monorails circulate throughout the piece. The cars are collected at the bottom and carried back up to the top again, repeating their rounds endlessly. The work represents today’s urban situation in which we can’t turn away from a constant flow. Toy parts and Lego blocks are used to depict the buildings in a city. They look so uniform and expressionless that they seem to encourage the repression of human individuality. In addition, the viewers soon become numb with constant metallic sounds of running cars. The sculpture is the artist’s metaphor for the environment of today’s city. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.