This expression of power was heightened by the way in which the works are typically installed; each uniform is placed on a specially built armature with a hanger. These are then positioned flat against the wall with sleeves outstretched so that they nearly touch one another. When several are shown, Burden’s L.A.P.D. Uniforms creates the effect of a visual cordon—enhancing their substantial physical presence. As noted in a July 1993 letter to Gagosian Gallery, Burden’s choice to present the uniforms on hangers was a nod to Joseph Beuys’s Felt Suit (1970).

In 2026, L.A.P.D. Uniforms continues to make a resoundingly powerful statement about institutional authority and how it is visually represented. The full edition was first exhibited at Gagosian Gallery’s Wooster Street location in early 1994, where it was shown alongside America’s Darker Moments (1994), a work that explores similar themes of aggression and violence in American history. Since then, L.A.P.D. Uniforms has been featured in several major museum exhibitions, including two of the artist’s critically acclaimed surveys: at the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna in 1996 and Chris Burden: Extreme Measures at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 2013–14. Both the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Fabric Workshop and Museum have editions of this work in their permanent collections.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Burden moved to California to attend Pomona College in the late 1960s; he continued living and working in the Los Angeles area until his death in 2015. His work is inexorably tied to the region, evidenced by his frequent use of found materials that were locally sourced and particularly characteristic of the city, as in his iconic streetlamp sculpture Urban Light (2009) installed in the public plaza at LACMA. This local focus was also certainly the case with L.A.P.D. Uniforms, for which Burden carefully researched and developed nearly regulation-standard copies of Los Angeles police uniforms, looking directly to the representatives of authority in his city.

As seen in archival documentation, some elements of L.A.P.D. Uniforms were purchased directly from official suppliers, while other parts were custom made. The badges, for instance, were made by a jeweler in Providence, Rhode Island, who insisted on having documentation of the legal grounds for these replicas. Upon review of the patent and copyright history, the Fabric Workshop determined, in consultation with an attorney, that the enlargement of the badges and their use in “an original piece of art with a strong socio-political theme” was within legal bounds. Each badge is numbered 1–30, with the number corresponding with Burden’s edition of the piece. For the garments themselves, which were manufactured by a company that produced official police uniforms, Burden experimented with scale, playing with different proportions to achieve his desired effect.

In 2026, the Estate of Chris Burden refabricated the handguns and police batons in accordance with Swiss law for their presentation at Basel. While seemingly authentic, the Beretta replicas have been sliced in half like relief sculptures, making their inoperability evident. The batons, which have been painstakingly crafted to resemble real weapons, are in fact composed of an innocuous soft foam.

L.A.P.D. Uniforms encapsulates Burden’s longtime investigations of the tactics of coercion and fear deployed by those in power, as well as observations on the social unrest at the time the work was created in the early to mid-1990s. As he stated, “I’ve always sort of been intimidated by policemen, and I wanted to have them be 10 percent bigger, so that when they were displayed. . . . you would just see them as, ‘Holy cow, cops are huge,’ kind of thing.” Yet despite being conceived in response to a specific historical event, L.A.P.D. Uniforms remains a strikingly relevant commentary on American society over thirty years later. Confronting themes of surveillance, discipline, and intimidation, its meaning continues to evolve and expand as it is considered in different cultural contexts, transforming the work anew for contemporary audiences.