Chris Burden

Though canonized for his work in body art and performance art in the 1970s, for the past four years Chris Burden has moved his skills towards moving architecture and sculpture. When looking at “Metropolis II” (2011), his room-sized, bafflingly complex road way of matchbox-sized cars, one begins to understand how life in Burden’s home city of Los Angeles can often feel so de-centered as to be placeless. “It wasn’t about trying to make a scale model.” he says. “It was more to evoke the energy of a city.” In a short documentary on the sculpture, the chiming minimalist background music played under an interview with Burden recalls a Michael Mann film. California art and Hollywood action movies apparently have a lot in common.

No less an ode to wide-open spaces is his "Beam Drop" (2008). You can't help but be reminded of the Los Angeles landscape when looking at the background of a video reposted today by Hyde or Die.