BBMet_03.12.10_K0441
“Although the Starn brothers are best known for their photographs, in fact their abiding interest is in organic systems and structures, as seen in their photographs of trees, leaves and snow flakes, or here, in Big Bambu.“
Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of 19th-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Invited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, Mike + Doug Starn presented Big Bambu: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop in April 2010. Big Bambu went on to become the official collateral exhibition of the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. During the six-month exhibition at the Met, the bamboo structure measured 100 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet high, and it took the form of a cresting wave, bridging realms of sculpture, architecture and performance. Over 600,000 visitors witnessed the continuing creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambu as it was constructed throughout the spring, summer and fall by the artists and their team of rock climbers. Set against Central Park and its urban backdrop, Big Bambu suggested the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism. Big Bambu encompassed a vast network of 7,000 interconnected 30- and 40-foot-long fresh-cut bamboo poles, lashed together with 70 miles of nylon rope. An internal footpath artery system grew along with the structure, facilitating its progress. The artists and museum made the artery systems open to the public, allowing visitors to fully experience the living sculpture and thrill of being aloft within this artwork (100 feet above Central Park).
