Metropolis II: the kinetic sculpture built out of boy racer dreams

For a sense of scale, note the dude on the right. Metropolis II is like a Matchbox® car track with serious glandular issues.

Playful Art: Metropolis II [video]

Metropolis II: the kinetic sculpture built out of boy racer dreams:

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has got itself a new toy. Or, to be more precise, it’s got itself a whole fleet of Hot Wheels mini speedsters, courtesy of one Chris Burden. He’s the gent responsible for dreaming up Metropolis II, the above interwoven set of tracks and circuits, which is populated with 1,200 “custom designed” cars, 13 toy trains, and some assorted scenery built out of Lego, tiles, and wood blocks.

Chris Burden’s Cars in Los Angeles:

The California artist Chris Burden may be in his 60s, but he is still playing with toys. The thing is, the older he gets the more outrageously complicated the toys become.

Two years ago he created a 65-foot Erector Set skyscraper that stood in Rockefeller Center, and in 2004 he made “Metropolis I,” composed of 80 Hot Wheels toy cars zooming around two single-lane highways along with monorail trains chugging on tracks of their own…

In “Metropolis II,” by his calculation, “every hour 100,000 cars circulate through the city,” Mr. Burden said. “It has an audio quality to it. When you have 1,200 cars circulating it mimics a real freeway. It’s quite intense.”