Cast Aluminum Shirt sculpture, AK Burns, "Discard (work shirt)", 2013

This flat-laid, wall-hanging life-size cast aluminum work shirt is an original work by artist A.K. Burns (b. 1975) from 2013, covered at the time in Artforum and BOMB magazines. A.K. Burns is an internationally acclaimed contemporary artist with work in the collections of major museums including the Guggenheim, the Whitney, and MoMA in New York and LACMA in Los Angeles.

The sculpture was originally shown in New York gallery Calicoon Fine Arts in a solo show for the artist in 2013. A.K. Burns described the work of that 2013 show to BOMB magazine as in response to "ideas about nature and the natural. The consistent part is the space from which I make; the trans-feminist experience... I’m interested in how technology, language, labor, and economy fabricate our perception of and relationship to bodies."

Burns described the process of the works further: "Last spring, I had access to a foundry—a process I had never worked with before. The molten metal is gorgeous and temperamental. And I was seduced by the required uniform, leather chaps. I cast a series of aluminum mono-print reliefs of discarded button-down work-shirts. The foundry is dirty and laborious. I hand-ladled the metal into the sand molds, so each print is a repeat subject made of multiple gestures. Of all the foundry metals, aluminum is the most contemporary and doesn’t occur naturally. The shirts are the uniform of those whose labor depends on their bodies. This is a dying and shifting economy, when our greatest product is affective and immaterial labor. Blue-collar labor used to be accessible to the middle class, now it’s exported and exploited. The shirts are also what I wear and a trope of “artist drag.” This fashion speaks to a shift between labor, industry and the creative class."

The artist is now represented by Galerie Michel Rein in Paris.

https://bombmagazine.org/articles/2013/10/23/a-k-burns/

https://www.artforum.com/events/a-k-burns-201834/

https://michelrein.com/artistes/presentation/15149/a.k.-burns