Metropolitan Museum of Art
Doug and Mike Starn Rooftop Sculpture

American artists Doug and Mike Starn have been invited by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to create a site-specific installation for The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden, opening to the public April 27.

The artists, identical twins, will present this new work they have titled "Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't, And You Won't Stop," a monumental bamboo structure measuring 100ft long by 50ft wide and 50ft high in the form of a cresting wave that will bridge realms of sculpture, architecture, and performance.

Visitors to the museum are meant to witness the creation and evolving incarnations of Big Bambú as construction pulls through the seasons with the artists and a team of rock climbers.

Gary Tinterow, Engelhard Chairman of the Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art said, "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 Bambú.' We are intrigued by the possibilities of this ever-evolving structure on our Roof Garden, which, when animated by the team of rock climbers, will become an organic system of its own."

"Big Bambú" is a continually growing and changing sculpture that will be constructed during the run of the installation from thousands of fresh-cut bamboo poles-a complex network of 5,000 interlocking 30- and 40-foot-long bamboo poles, which will be lashed together with 50 miles of nylon rope.

Doug Starn says, "The reason we had to make it so big is to make all of us feel small-or at least to awaken us to the fact that individually we are not so big. Once we're aware of our true stature we can feel a part of something much more vast than we could ever have dreamed of before."

The work will embody a contradictory nature: it is always complete, yet it is always unfinished. Working on the sculpture while the exhibition is open to the public, the artists and teams of rock climbers (six to twenty of whom will be present during different phases of the project) will provide visitors with a rare opportunity to experience their work as it unfolds.

"It is a temporary structure in a sense, but it is a sculpture-not a static sculpture, it's an organism that we are just a part of-helping it to move along," said Mike Starn.

"We will be constructing a slice of seascape, like our photographs, a cutaway view of a wave constantly in motion-our growth and change remains invariable, it is constant and unchanged."

This never-resting sculpture will evolve throughout the course of the exhibition: the initial, roughly 30ft high by 50ft wide by 100ft long structure will be completed by opening day on April 27; next, the eastern portion of the sculpture will be built up by the artists and rock climbers to an elevation of some 50 feet; and by summer, the western portion of the sculpture will be elevated by the artists and rock climbers to around 40 feet in height. An internal footpath artery system grows within the structure, facilitating the progress of the organism.

The ephemeral state of the work will be documented by the artists in various scale photographs and video.