An Artist’s Vision: Building With Toys, but on a Grand Scale
Artsy Editors
Tower of London Bridge, 2003
Gagosian Gallery
Three Ghost Ships, 1991
Gagosian Gallery
"In work he has made over the last 25 years, Mr. Burden has been fascinated with feats of engineering as the means by which people try to defy their physical environment, ignoring obstacles like gravity and distance, weight and water. He has built several elaborate, scaled-down bridges using Erector Set and Meccano toy construction parts, including a 28-foot version of the steel-arch Hell Gate Bridge over the East River. (In an article last year, Peter Schjeldahl, an art critic for The New Yorker, described him admiringly as “a boyish gimcracker diverting us by diverting himself.”)"
Artsy Editors