Big Bambú is a work of

installation art Installation art is an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called ...

by identical twin artists

Doug and Mike Starn Doug and Mike Starn are American artists, identical twins, born 1961. Biography The Starn brothers gained international attention at the 1987 Whitney Biennial. The Starns have been primarily working conceptually with photography for the past tw ...

. Variations on the Big Bambu theme have been constructed at several locations around the world. Combining architecture and sculpture, it examines the tension between chaos and order in nature.

History

Big Bambú had its first installation in the artists' studio in

Beacon, New York Beacon is a city located in Dutchess County, New York, United States. The 2020 census placed the city total population at 13,769. Beacon is part of the Poughkeepsie– Newburgh– Middletown, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area as we ...

.See It, Feel It, Touch It, Climb It
Carol Vogel, February 11, 2010, ''The New York Times'' From April to October 2010 it was the featured exhibition at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art Roof Garden The Met Fifth Avenue is the primary museum building for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, United States. The building is located at 1000 Fifth Avenue, along the Museum Mile on the eastern edge of Central Park in Manhattan's Upper ...

. In 2011 another incarnation of Big Bambú was installed as a collateral exhibition of the 54th

Biennale Biennale (), Italian for "biennial" or "every other year", is any event that happens every two years. It is most commonly used within the art world to describe large-scale international contemporary art exhibitions. As such the term was popularis ...

in Venice, Italy. In 2013, it was installed on the Japanese island of

Teshima is an island located in the inland sea of Japan, between Naoshima and Shōdoshima islands, and is part of Kagawa Prefecture. It has an area of and a population of about 1,000 people. Teshima is one of the locations of the Setouchi Triennale, ...

during the

Setouchi Triennale The Setouchi International Art Triennale is a contemporary art festival held every three years on several islands in the Seto Inland Sea of Japan and the coastal cities of Takamatsu and Tamano is a city located in southern Okayama Prefecture, J ...

art festival. In 2014, it was presented in the

Israel Museum The Israel Museum ( he, מוזיאון ישראל, ''Muze'on Yisrael'') is an art and archaeological museum in Jerusalem. It was established in 1965 as Israel's largest and foremost cultural institution, and one of the world’s leading encyclopa ...

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

. Big Bambú is made of thousands of

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, bu ...

poles, lashed together to form a complex structure through which visitors walk on elevated bamboo paths even as a crew continues to build a new part of the structure.Be a part of the art; Sculpture you can walk through
Barbara Hoffman and Calla Salinger, ''New York Post'', June 19, 2010.Une jungle de bambous sur le toit du Met
Adèle Smith, ''Le Figaro'', June 4, 2010 The name is taken from the

Cheech & Chong Cheech & Chong are a comedy duo consisting of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong. The duo found commercial and cultural success in the 1970s and 1980s with their stand-up routines, studio recordings, and feature films, which were based on the hippie a ...

album '' Big Bambu''Doug + Mike Starn on the Roof: Big Bambu
, NYC Arts, The Complete Guide. In the original installation in the artists studio in Beacon, New York, Big Bambú is in continual motion as a crew disassembles one end and continues to build the other end.A Day of Art Along the Hudson
William Haseltine, ''The Atlantic'', May 25, 2009 The piece was reconfigured into a gothic letter "T" to be photographed for the cover of the fifth anniversary edition of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' style magazine.Now Showing , The Making of The Starn Brothers ‘T’
Alix Browne.

Metropolitan Museum installation

The installation on the roof of the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

was conceived as a giant wave cresting over the rooftop."Living" bamboo sculpture opens at Met rooftop garden
Walden Siew, Reuters, April 27, 2010.
''The Telegraph'', April 27, 2010. Art critic

Karen Wilkin Karen Wilkin (born 1940) is a New York-based independent curator and art critic specializing in 20th-century modernism. Biography Educated at Barnard College (1962) and Columbia University, she was awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbrig ...

wrote that the experience of walking on the roof terrace under the sculpture felt like "wandering through a bamboo grove."Branching Out Atop the Met Museum With 'Big Bambú', Doug and Mike Starn Have Erected a Surrogate Forest, At Once Artificial and Natural
''The Wall Street Journal'', Karen Wilkin, May 12, 2010. She described the piece as not a "significant sculpture... it's more of a phenomenon. But it's a delightful addition to the Met for the next six months—a temporary, ecologically correct folly designed to entertain." Big Bambú is built of several types of bamboo, primarily a Japanese type called Madake, and also thin Meyeri bamboo and thick moso bamboo. All of the bamboo was grown in Georgia and South Carolina. The construction was undertaken by the artists working together with a team of twenty qualified rock climbers.Big Bambu; April 27, 2010 – October 31, 2010
, ''Metropolitan Museum of Art Press Release'', Construction continued throughout the exhibition's six-month run, with the sculpture ultimately reaching 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, 50 feet high and using 3,200 bamboo poles. Museum visitors were required to wear rubber-soled, close-toed shoes to climb through the structure. Visitors could walk underneath the sculpture without obtaining a ticket and with no restriction on footwear.

Israel Museum installation

''Big Bambu: 5000 arms to hold you'', constructed in the sculpture garden of the

in 2014, is 16 meters (52.5 feet) high and covers an area of over 700 square meters (7,500 square feet). Visitors are invited to climb on the framework of 10,000 bamboo poles bound by rope, which forms a labyrinth of winding paths and offers panoramic views of the Jerusalem cityscape.

Ordrupgård Museum, Denmark

In 2018 a ''Big Bambú'' installation was made at Ordrupgård Museum in Denmark.

References

External links

York Times interview and film

Video of configuration of Big Bambú as ''The New York Times "T".

Starns brothers' website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Big Bambu 2010 sculptures 2014 sculptures Installation art works Bamboo