The uniforms, which are more than seven feet tall and are suspended from clothes hangers, “can be a bit of a Rorschach, depending on how you’re feeling,” 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 “a guardian,” Govan said, but when seen in a group, they can have “the scary and menacing quality of an urban army.”
“The scale was a genius idea,” Gagosian said of Burden’s work. “Making them larger than any human made them more imposing.”
“You’re really bringing to it your own sociological experience,” Friel said. For those who “feel you would not be protected by them under certain conditions, it would be more frightening,” she said.
Production Issues
Creating the works involved some distressing moments for Friel, who was initially concerned about the legality of producing police uniforms.
“I was constantly in fear that I’m going to somehow get exposed,” 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. “I wasn’t about to say we’re doing 30 oversized police uniforms for a gallery, based on the Rodney King acquittal, to be critical of L.A.P.D. officers,” she said.
Buying the 30 guns was the simple part — “easy as pie,” 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, “They thought it was almost a criminal act of disfigurement.”
