DON’T BE CHICKEN; CHECK OUT THE LIBRARY’S BONES
At the library, a giant chicken and the things it says about our planet
There are so many ways to enjoy chicken: baked, broiled or poached; cubed into a kabob, fried into a finger or mixed with mayo and served on toast; slurried as a wing, chopped as a liver, barbecued as a gnarly foot.
We eat a lot of chicken in this country, about 95 pounds per person in 2019 alone, according to the National Chicken Council. That’s maybe 15 chickens apiece, including the carcass ( mmm, soup!) and climbing to double the amount of cow we consume. Compare that to 50 years ago, when we ate twice as much beef as poultry. You’d think we would have run out of chickens by now.
But, no, science has saved us from that calamity, breeding birds we can hatch, fatten and slaughter in practically no time at all. The broiler known as the Ross 308, perhaps the most popular breed around, goes from zero to 6.39 pounds in just over 30 days. And it’s a stunning chicken, touted for its bright yellow skin,
high muscle mass and ability to lay plenty of eggs. When the history of 21st century humanity is written, the Ross 308 will figure prominently.
That’s kind of the point of the towering chicken sculpture currently hulking over the atrium of the Denver Public Library’s main branch downtown. Artist Andreas Greiner’s “Monument for the 308” stands 30 feet off the floor, and it’s a grand specimen.
Greiner, with some hightech help, puts the 308 in its proper perspective. He presents it as a reconstructed skeleton, much in the same way anthropologists put together the bones of dinosaurs and display them in natural history museums. If you didn’t inspect it so closely, you might mistake this 308 for any old allosaurus or maybe a velociraptor.
But its neck is a little thin and its toes a bit curly. There’s a prominent beak, and the whole thing gets wide and squatty toward the bottom; it’s got chicken hips.
What Greiner reminds us here is that, as a species, the 308 dominates its era, just as the T- rex did back in the day. At DPL, it has come home to roost.
Tough Grenier took his sculpture seriously, the piece certainly has a punchline, employing a process spelled out in detail on the website of the installation’s sponsor, Denver’s Black Cube Nomadic Museum.
The artist, who is German, collaborated with the research institute, TH Wildau, and the university hospital, Charité, in Berlin. The team started by taking x- ray scans of a real- life 308 to determine its physical dimensions. The bird underwent multiple CAT scans.
Then, Grenier turned to a more contemporary technology to construct his monument: 3- D printing. Every single bone was created, millimeter by millimeter, by a machine at TH Wildau. Up close, you can see the tens of thousands of layers of plastic compound that give it structure.
Grenier programmed his computers to print at 20 times the actual size. The printing process took four months, according to Cortney Lane Stell, Black Cube’s executive director and chief curator.
The bones are tied together via a metal armature, painted black to disappear into the background.
Black Cube’s modus operandi as a visual arts organization is to avoid the usual exhibition traps and to present works in a public context, outside of the sterile, “white cube” gallery. The organization has presented in spaces a diverse as a multi- story Capitol Hill parking garage and the campus of Denver’s main wastewater treatment plant.
Here, it has found an appropriate coop for its giant chicken, the central library, created in the 1990’ s by renowned architect Michael Graves, which happens to be one of the city’s most important pieces of design.
The building is pure postmodernism, full of classical references to things like colonnades and pyramids, but rendered with contemporary engineering and materials. Grenier’s piece unfolds in the same way with its nods to the past, expressed through presentday media and technology. They are a good pair.
Plus, the atrium is surrounded by a series of balconies that provide, in this case, varied ways to approach and enjoy the sculpture.
And to think about it. “Monument to the 308” is best observed casually, like, say, with the kids during a trip to check out some books or as a side trip to the Denver Art Museum across the street. It’s not a heavy- handed piece.
Grenier isn’t taking a particularly anti- consumption stance here, though you could infer that. The piece does magnify our reliance on science- based, mass- produced food — plenty to say right there about our diets, our treatment of animals, environmental concerns. You could also infer that this chicken is a hero of our times, engineered to provide plentiful and affordable meat to a planet where a lot of people wouldn’t otherwise have access to a protein source that’s sustained folks for 10,000 years.
This work of art feels more like what its title proclaims — it’s a monument to the way we live now and the things that enable our 21st century existence. It isn’t pretty. Actually, it’s a little scary. The real world reduced, and then enlarged so we can have a good look.
Monument for the 308,” cosponsored by Black Cube and the Denver Theatre District, will lurk through Dec. 8 in the atrium of the Denver Central Library, 10 14th Ave. It’s free. Info at blackcube. art.