Doug Aitken: Still Life
An exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken explores the modern landscape through a series of sculptures.
Titled Still Life, the exhibition features an installation of new sculptural objects within a labyrinthine space designed to create an experience of unexpected encounters and a sense of mystery 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 and the view is in control of their experience of the space.
As they make their way through the space, 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 illuminated light boxes sculptures hover on the walls. Combining text and image into physical form, they each represent the crystallisation of an idea captured from the frantic modern landscape.
Among the key 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.
Doug Aitken lives and works in Los Angeles and has exhibited extensively in galleries and museums around the world. His work is included in the permanent collections of museums including the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), and La Coleccíon Jumex (Mexico City).
Still Life is on display until Saturday 11 October 2014 at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, USA.
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