An oasis of calm amid the Frieze Los Angeles bustle can be found on Gagosian’s stand this year, where Chris Burden’s sumptuous installation Nomadic Folly (2001) is being shown for the first time in the US. Originally created for the 2001 Istanbul Biennial, the work is an ephemeral structure built from tent-like umbrellas and gauzy curtains, lined with woven rugs and pillows that Burden sourced from Turkish souks.
“I know Chris loved making it,” says the curator Paul Schimmel, a long-time friend of Burden’s, who was one of the first to visit the installation at the fair on Thursday, during the VIP opening. “Rather than making a concrete work or sculpture or performance, he wanted to make something that was an experience,” Schimmel says, adding that Burden had a lot of fun picking out the rugs from local markets. “Chris was a collector; he would buy one rug for this [installation] and one rug for himself.”
Schimmel never got to see the original iteration installed in an 18th-century courtyard of Topkapi Palace, since the trip he was planning to take to Istanbul with a group of Museum of Contemporary Art patrons was cancelled in the wake of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York—which occurred ten days before the biennial’s opening. Having the piece go on view in Los Angeles, after the city experienced its own disaster with the recent wildfires, is gratifying. “It’s a joyful and celebratory piece,” Schimmel says, noting that the artist loved the sense of cocooned privacy inside the installation, which fair visitors can experience for themselves. “In a funny way, it was Burden’s own little palace.”
Nomadic Folly was last shown by Gagosian in Rome in 2010, alongside another architectural installation by Burden, Dreamer’s Folly, made from three ornately grilled cast-iron gazebos. Both works were part of the artist’s estate following Burden’s death in 2015, and Dreamer’s Folly was shown at Frieze Los Angeles in 2022, where it was reportedly bought by a European institution for an undisclosed sum. Nomadic Folly is also on sale, likewise for an unspecified price.
