I set up these unexpected, dreaded situations as an attempt to control fate. Instead of letting things happen to me, I made them happen.
—Chris Burden
Gagosian is pleased to present Cross Communication, an exhibition of relics, films, and video works by Chris Burden, plus other materials that document his early performances.
In his performances and audio/video works of the 1970s and ’80s, Burden challenged his own mental and physical limitations while exploring the construction of agency and intent. Fascinated by the mediation of visual language in television advertisements, and by the formulas for fame they seemed to represent, he sought to reflect the emergent violence and complexity of American society. Employing unconventional guerrilla tactics to question the broad acceptance of consumer culture, Burden confronted audiences with their own moral culpability. And over the course of his career, he moved from performances in which his own body functioned as the medium to spectacular large-scale sculptures and installations, a number of which use toy parts or actual vehicles.
Many of Burden’s early performances find the artist placing himself in dangerous or uncomfortable situations that he invested with both visceral impact and metaphorical bite. In Super-8 footage of the notorious Shoot (1971), he is shown being shot in the left arm by a friend with a rifle, while in 220 (1971), he and three others perched on ladders in a flooded gallery, then dropped a 220-volt electric line into the water beneath. In Back to You (1974), a volunteer sticks pins into the artist’s stomach and foot as he lies on the floor of an elevator, while Through the Night Softly (1973) finds him crawling through broken glass on Main Street.
