This is Gagosian’s 500th book. It fittingly marks the achievement, as Chris Burden was among the first artists to work with Larry Gagosian. Chris Burden: Streetlamps is the definitive publication on Burden’s iconic series. 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. He realized four more major streetlamp sculptures in both public and private spaces, all of which are lavishly documented here from conception through installation.

Poetic Practical offers the first examination of Chris Burden’s unrealized projects, featuring never-before-seen archival materials and newly commissioned photography of Burden’s studio and property. This extensively illustrated book includes 435 images, featuring never-before-seen archival materials and newly commissioned photography of Burden’s studio and property. Burden’s work, whether realized or unrealized, was fundamentally driven by a speculative approach to artistic production, one that compelled him to interrogate the physical limits of his own body, social mores, institutional capabilities, and scientific forces. Above all, his work repeatedly sought to test the thresholds of presumed impossibility, making his unrealized works the ultimate example of such measures. The sixty-seven artworks included in this publication offer a unique and unprecedented perspective on the life and working process of this formidable artist.

The work of seminal contemporary artist Chris Burden, insightfully contextualized around major themes, illuminates a practice that is as unique as it is influential. For four decades, Chris Burden’s work has redefined the boundaries of the sculptural field. Whether subjecting himself to extremes of physical suffering or reconfiguring forgotten urban objects and toy models to create potent signifiers of a time and place, the brute force of Burden’s work in the physical realm reverberates through the psychic one. On the occasion of the New Museum’s focused survey of Burden’s work, this book provides new perspectives on his art. Organized around themes like the Myth of the American West, the Institution, Gender Roles, and Model Making, the book reexamines preoccupations that span the artist’s long career.