[2][3] Kessler blended these visions with equal parts humor and tragedy in pieces such as The Last Birdrunner (1994), a kinetic sculpture based on the science fiction movie Blade Runner.
Shown in a solo exhibition at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York in 1994, The Last Birdrunner consists of a stuffed bird outfitted in a parachute pack and perched on a ledge that slowly travels up and down while a motor-driven apparatus plays out a haunting dirge on a toy piano.
The Last Birdrunner represents, according to Artforum critic Neville Wakefield, “the nemesis of … utopian dreams in the guise of a lonely cockatoo wearing a life vest.”[3] With the advent of 9/11, Kessler’s focus shifted to confront themes of surveillance, isolationism, and war mongering in the United States.
[4] Upon entering the installation through the cut-out crotch of a massive-scale porn image, viewers are surrounded by surveillance cameras affixed to mechanisms that reproduce the lock and load click of artillery as they turn.
Cheap color televisions stacked into scattered mounds project the live feed from the surveillance cameras, while images of American soldiers entering Saddam Hussein’s palace loom large on the wall.
This … show is about exposing mechanisms – of the sculpture, and of our culture now.”[5] After debuting at MoMA PS1, Palace at 4 A.M. toured Europe, including a 2008 exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.