Kristian Burford’s Audition

Exhibited in the NYE + Brown Gallery on La Cienega Boulevard, the installation shows two life-size, fluorescent, beige office cubicles, each inhabited by a sculpture of a similarly beige-hued female nude, appearing bored and frightened. The first scene titled “In Love” exhibits the sculpture leaning against a desk, while the second scene titled “Love Object” shows a further sculpture resting on a partition. Each cage-like diorama is walled with two-way mirrors, visually multiplying the cubicles and nudes ad infinitum and from all vantage points. Kristian Burford deals with the unsettling dream in which you were naked in a classroom or in the office. This is the psychological situation Kristian Burford discusses in his life size installation of empty office cubicles with life-size sculptures of naked women. The beholder feels like spying on window-display mannequins in the middle of the night, not only to discover that they have secret lives, but also that these mannequin-like creatures have spirits and souls.