Chris Burden an got enormous meteorite on eBay for this installation

Chris Burden - Porsche with Meteorite, 2013, Photo by Benoit Pailley/New Museum
Chris Burden – Porsche with Meteorite, 2013, restored 1974 Porsche 914, 390 pound meteorite, steel structure installation, installation view, New Museum, New York City, USA, 2013, photo: Benoit Pailley

What was it?

Chris Burden was not exactly an everyday artist. While his previous work usually involved a form of danger (see Shoot), his last works have still been about performance, but mostly involved creating very much advanced models of working machines.

One of such of his works was sitting in the New Museum, New York, in 2013. The meteorite at the New Museum weighed 365 pounds, hanging from one end of a massive steel frame, while a Canary yellow 1974 Porsche 914 hung from the other end.

Meteorite on eBay & free shipping

Burden went to great lengths to make his machines come to life and a great deal of energy and intelligence is required. According to how the meteorite machine came to be, Burden spotted the huge meteorite on eBay, and it was available on free shipping too.

He had never seen a meteorite that big, so he went ahead to buy it without actually having any inkling whatsoever about what he would do with it.

Chris Burden – Porsche with Meteorite, 2013, restored 1974 Porsche 914, 390 pound meteorite, steel structure installation, installation view, New Museum, New York City, USA, 2013
Chris Burden – Porsche with Meteorite, 2013, restored 1974 Porsche 914, 390 pound meteorite, steel structure installation, installation view, New Museum, New York City, USA, 2013, photo: CC BY-NC 2.0 by jackszwergoldarchives

Video: Behind the scenes at the New Museum

Chris Burden's Porsche with Meteorite (2013)

1 min 17 sec

About Chris Burden

Chris Burden, whose most well-known work is Shoot, an art performance in which he had his own arm shot by a friend in 1971, had over the years grown into a stocky, vigorous 67 years old man.

His works were usually monumental, and they always took a very long time to bring to life, but there is a clean elegance about them, which Burden said he imbibed from the University of California.

More by Chris Burden

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