ANTHONY BURDIN
Born Encino, California; lives in California

Numerous modern and contemporary artists have used the automobile as an iconographic source, but few as literally as Anthony Burdin: the nomadic California-based artist has reputedly lived in a 1973 Chevy Nova for most of the past decade. Many of his Voodoo Vocals videos, which he began making in the early 1990s, are shot from the car's interior. Burdin, who calls himself a "recording artist," drives around with a handheld camera, singing along to songs playing on the radio or on a paint-spattered boom box resting on the passenger seat. His eclectic musical tastes range from Blue Öyster Cult to the James Bond theme, and his voice moves from whimpering to screeching in an atonal farrago that parallels the jerky movements of his camera as it tracks the passing urban landscape. In Desert Mix, a video series from the early 1990s, the artist meanders through the parched topography of Southern California, muttering, grunting, and breathing heavily as he traverses barren expanses littered with brush and old car parts.

LP

...read more about this artist in the Biennial Catalogue


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Scum Strat II, 2005. Ink, enamel, and etching on guitar, dimensions variable. Collection of the artist; courtesy maccarone inc., New York