Chris Burden: Streetlamps

Description

Chris Burden: Streetlamps explores the artist's work with antique streetlamps, which he began to amass in the early 2000s. Burden fully restored 202 streetlamps from the 1920s to create his renowned Urban Light, which was acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and went on public view in 2008. He realized four more major streetlamp sculptures in both public and private spaces, all of which are lavishly documented here from conception through installation. A conversation between Michael Govan and Burden from 2008 brings the artist's own voice into the publication, as do artist statements written by Burden which accompany the works. A photo essay by Ari Marcopoulos includes never-before-seen images of Burden preparing for his exhibition of Fourteen Magnolia Double Lamps at South London Gallery in 2006, a precursor to Urban Light.

Christopher Bedford is the Dorothy Wagner Wallace Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art. He was previously the Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. During his tenure at the Rose, he commissioned a major installation from Chris Burden for the museum, resulting in Burden's Light of Reason (2014). Russell Ferguson is an art historian, curator, author, and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where Chris Burden also taught from 1978 until 2005. Ferguson was chair of the Department of Art at UCLA from 2007 until 2013. He was previously Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs and Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and an Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Michael Govan is the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Govan arranged the acquisition of Chris Burden's Urban Light for the museum; it debuted in finished form outside of LACMA in February 2008. Ari Marcopoulos is a photographer and filmmaker. George Roberts, co-founder, co-chairman and co-CEO of KKR, is an alumnus of Claremont McKenna College. In 2016 he gifted the Roberts Pavilion, a fitness and events centre, to his alma mater. Included in the gift was Chris Burden's final streetlamp sculpture, Meet in the Middle (2012/2016), installed adjacent to the Pavilion's entry.