The uniforms, which are more than seven feet tall and are suspended from clothes hangers, \u201ccan be a bit of a Rorschach, depending on how you\u2019re feeling,\u201d said Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The museum has lent two of the pieces, which are not for sale, to the Basel showcase. Individually, each piece can be viewed as \u201ca guardian,\u201d Govan said, but when seen in a group, they can have \u201cthe scary and menacing quality of an urban army.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe scale was a genius idea,\u201d Gagosian said of Burden\u2019s work. \u201cMaking them larger than any human made them more imposing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re really bringing to it your own sociological experience,\u201d Friel said. For those who \u201cfeel you would not be protected by them under certain conditions, it would be more frightening,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Production Issues<\/p>\n
Creating the works involved some distressing moments for Friel, who was initially concerned about the legality of producing police uniforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was constantly in fear that I\u2019m going to somehow get exposed,\u201d Friel said. She convinced a Los Angeles police officer to pose for photos by telling him that she was doing research for film and television productions, she said, and he provided her with an official manual about uniforms and accessories. \u201cI wasn\u2019t about to say we\u2019re doing 30 oversized police uniforms for a gallery, based on the Rodney King acquittal, to be critical of L.A.P.D. officers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Buying the 30 guns was the simple part \u2014 \u201ceasy as pie,\u201d Friel said. But when asked to disable them permanently, the people working at the shop tried to talk Burden into letting the procedure be reversible, she said, adding, \u201cThey thought it was almost a criminal act of disfigurement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The uniforms, which are more than seven feet tall and are suspended from clothes hangers, \u201ccan be a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[31384,77,45445,45448,45446,45450,1527,22517,45449,45447,45451],"class_list":["post-89936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basel","tag-art-basel-festival","tag-basel","tag-burden","tag-calif","tag-chris","tag-demonstrations","tag-gagosian","tag-gagosian-gallery","tag-larry","tag-police-department-los-angeles","tag-protests-and-riots"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116795316995774444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}