LOS ANGELES, CA.- Regen Projects presents Still Life, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken. Spanning a variety of media encompassing photography, sculpture, publications, sound, and single and multi-channel video installations, Aitken’s work explores the modern landscape and posits possibilities for new uncharted frontiers. This exhibition, the artist’s fourth solo presentation at Regen Projects, will feature an installation of new sculptural objects within a labyrinthine space designed to create an experience of unexpected encounters and a sense of mystery and discovery for the viewer to navigate.
Taking its name from the traditional concept of nature morte, Aitken’s Still Life presents an immersive environment where place and time dissolves, where the individual exists adrift in an electrically charged space. Wending their way through the gallery, viewers are confronted with a series of signs and symbols that at first glance appear familiar but upon closer inspection reveal their foreign nature. A series of internally illuminated light box sculptures hover on the gallery walls. Combining text and image into physical form, they each represent the crystallization of an idea captured from the frenetic modern landscape.
Among the other works featured in the exhibition is a cast public pay phone bathed in a luminous glow. Appearing as a relic of a bygone era and removed from its everyday function the work becomes a vessel emitting interactive light that brightens or dims depending on the viewer’s proximity to its surface. A sonic fountain combines water and sound creating a visceral optical and auditory experience. A hexagonal sculpture features a collage photo of an aerial view of the LA freeway system infinitely reflected in a series of mirrors, creating a kaleidoscopic vision. Existing as a series of ruptures, the works in Aitken’s subconscious twilight terrain unfold in a parallel of time and space, perceptually suspended in time.
Doug Aitken (b. 1968) lives and works in Los Angeles. He has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums worldwide. Recent solo shows and presentations include Mirror, Seattle Museum of Art, Seattle (2013); The Source, Sundance International Film Festival, Park City, Utah (2013); Electric Earth, Nam June Paik Art Center, Yongin-si, South Korea (2013); Song I, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2012); The Source, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, England (2012); Altered Earth, LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2012); Black Mirror, Deste Foundation, Hydra, Greece (2011); Frontier, Isola Tiberina, Rome (2009); Sonic Pavilion, Inhotim Contemporary Art Center, Brumadinho, Brazil (2009); and Sleepwalkers, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007). In 2013, Aitken realized Station to Station, an ambitious multi-site month-long journey across America that brought together an international group of artists, musicians, writers, and thinkers.
Work by the artist is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg; Vienna Secession, Vienna; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles; and La Coleccíon Jumex, Mexico City; among others.
This year Rizzoli published 100 YEARS, the most comprehensive monograph on Aitken’s work to date, featuring contributions by Aaron Betsky, Francesco Bonami, Bice Curiger, Kerry Brougher, Tim Griffin, and Hans Ulrich Obrist.
