Burden of light
Chris Burden has been accused of having a “mean streak of adolescent megalomania”, the curse of the macho “boys with toys”, always out to impress, if not frighten. I don’t understand the apprehension, though I can’t say I’ve seen much of Burden’s work.
But who couldn’t be thrilled with even the concept behind “Fist of Light”? The cheesy sketch above may be the closest his idea has come to realisation, but you can imagine clearly enough an insulated metal box big enough to walk into, lined with a thousand 500-watt quartz light bulbs, “theoretically enough light to make black appear white”.
It would have required a massive electricity dose and equally massive air-conditioners to keep it from incinerating itself.
Dimming his prospects considerably, the American last year had a solo exhibition at the South London Gallery in which 14 cast-iron lamp posts of the sort used in Los Angeles in the 1920s were installed in what was dubbed a meeting of “architectural intervention” and “engineering feat”.
The piece, “14 Magnolia Double Lamps, 2006″, stayed lit for a 50-day demonstration of how light works on many levels. Visitors could ruminate about urban infrastructure, about the “homecoming” of European technology from America, about how these charming antiques once symbolised civic wealth and pride. The gallery suggested that each was “an ornate totem to industrialism”.
Burden, now into his 60s, used to do conceptual performance pieces involving his own body before shifting to politically charged installations like “The Reason for the Neutron Bomb” in 1979, in which American nickels and wooden matchsticks stood in for 50,000 Soviet tanks.
That penchant for calculated scale evolved into engineered structures, most notably scale-model fantasy societies, as in “Pizza City, 1996″, and later model bridges and how they simultaneously represent human nature and scientific progress.
“Pizza City” comprises several tables piled with model buildings, in a hypnotically intricate, believable and seemingly functional city, complete with a harbour, airport and even a desert oilfield. PT boats bob in the cellophane sea with Christmas-tree ornaments, overseen by the Statue of Liberty and a smoking spark plug. The highrises on land might be glass boxes or shoe boxes. From a snowy hillside, Swiss chalets gaze at an sand-whipped oil refinery.
Also in 1996 Burden made heavy machinery airborne with “The Flying Steamroller” — an actual 12-ton steamroller attached to a pivoting arm with a counterbalance weight. Still on view, it drives in a wide circle at top speed while a hydraulic piston lifts it into the air, still spinning, for several minutes. The photo here is by Andy Stagg, from the Chelsea College of Art and Design website.
