Lori Hersberger: Burnout

Sat Sep 8 2001

HOW CAN YOU KILL ME? (I'M ALREADY DEAD), 2002.

Motorcycle burnout: Revving engines! Deafening noise! Burning rubber! Cheering crowd! A barricaded Chelsea street was the canvas for Lori Hersberger's "burnt rubber painting" where four professional motorcyclists revved their engines and spun their wheels to lay down skid marks and "donuts."

Hersberger employs the bikers' tires as his paintbrush. Rubber tire residue from the burnout is to remain on the street as a visual marker of this spectacular performance/painting.
This was the Swiss visual artist Lori Hersberger's first event staged in the US, followed by his current installation at SI, How Can You Kill Me? (I'm Alreday Dead) where, on the opening night a second New York BURNOUT was staged.

For his first US solo exhibition, Swiss artist Lori Hersberger has created an overall installation using Western gunfights, Hollywood action movies, colored lights, broken mirrors, hay bales, and smoking motorcycles. In the darkened gallery, the combination of these various devices forms a synthetic matrix leaving viewers dazzled with this endless movie trailer-like exhibition. Lori Hersberger started making art in the early nineties when he began to construct his web of works ranging from video installations to sculptures and paintings. Destablilizing common notions of media, he works with unexpected materials, such as with BURNOUT in Bienne and New York. For BURNOUT, Hersberger staged a performance in which motorcyclists' tires doubled as his paintbrushes, laying down skid marks and creating paintings on the ground. Hersberger gained international recognition for his installation Archaic Modern Suite, an oversized floating platform constructed out of overlapping carpets, in Harald Szeemann's Aperto exhibition at the Venice Biennale of 1999.

BIKERS BURNOUT
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2001
12:30 - 1:30 PM
Location: West 18th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues.

BURNOUT
THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002, 7PM
SWISS INSTITUTE - CONTEMPORARY ART
Opening Reception
How Can You Kill Me? (I'm Already Dead)

Burnout is Organized by the SWISS INSTITUTE-CONTEMPORARY ART, New York. Presented as part of the Downtown Arts Festival's Chelsea Art Walk day. Thanks to Scott Chester, Acid Inc.