Chris Burden is an enormously influential conceptual artist who began exhibiting in 1971. He received instant fame that year with a performance piece called Shoot in which a friend, at his request, shot him in the arm. Since then his work has investigated the workings of money, power, military might, and especially technology.

In 1977 he engineered and built a one-passenger utopian car, for example. Since 1997 he has been working with Meccano and Erector Set parts to build four bridges. One of these is a bridge planned but never built for a gorge in Mexico. The largest is a 28-foot long model...