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The Landscapes of the Imagination

DOUG AITKEN

The hopes and fears of modern civilisation are memorably amplified in the work of American artist Doug Aitken (b. 1968), whose large-scale film and sound installations transform the architecture of their settings and immerse the viewer. Throughout his career, this innovator has explored the creative possibilities of new technology, turning unlikely surfaces into screens and so bringing our attention back to the gadgetry that surrounds and permeates our everyday lives, but to whose presence we have become desensitised.

Aitken restlessly travels the globe in search of subject matter, and makes use of any combination of media that best reveals the subject at hand, whether it is a simple photograph or a complex moving sculpture of automated mirrors, or the open-ended storytelling of his quasi-narrative films. Since the mid-1990s, he has made use of multiple screens and synchronised projections to create a synaesthetic experience, often redefining the whole idea of the art exhibition itself.

At the Schirn Kunsthalle, four film installations and related sculptures and a site-specific sound installation take over the entire exhibition area – and beyond. This overview of the artist’s career will examine his idea of “liquid architecture” and the way in which his multimedia interventions transform the built environment into a landscape of the imagination that serves to raise profound questions in the viewer – but which also draws back from offering any simple answers.

Aitken’s previous projects have turned the idea of the gallery on its head and opened it up into public space by projecting work on the outside walls of a venue, as seen for example in 2007’s Sleepwalkers at MoMA in New York , while he has also staged a number of live performances and “happenings” including the Station to Station event (2013). Described as “a living project exploring modern creativity”, this mobile collaboration of artists and performers took place on a 4,000-mile train journey from New York to San Francisco. Throughout his work, Aitken shows a fascination with the human capacity for collectivity and cooperation.

Sleepwalkers – which made use of actors Tilda Swinton and Donald Sutherland and musician Cat Power in five interlocking narratives projected on MoMA’s exterior walls – continued the artist’s series of high-profile interventions in the urban environment. In 2000 Glass Horizon saw him project a pair of eyes onto the frontage of the Vienna Secession, while in 2001 he used the whole of London’s Serpentine Gallery for his installation New Ocean – with the museum’s tower becoming a functional lighthouse at night. Most dramatically, SONG 1 (2012), at the Hirshhorn in Washington DC, turned the entire 360-degree façade of the museum into a vast circular screen. A deconstruction of the song I Only Have Eyes For You, it created a cinema experience that could never be fully grasped from any single location.

“Throughout his career, this innovator has explored the possibilities of new technology, turning unlikely surfaces into screens and so bringing our attention back to the gadgetry that surrounds and permeates our everyday lives.”

Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 9 July - 27 September www.schirn.de

18 Aesthetica