Doug Aitken at Regen Projects

Having showcased a collection of works from Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken just over a year ago, Regen Projects will repeat the feat to showcase a collection of new works from the illustrious artist. Aitken’s work encompasses a variety of media: photography, sculpture, books, sound, and single and multi-channel video installations. His non-linear narratives examine space and time through the altered perception of the experiencing subject. A continued interest in architecture is explored inAitken’s most recent film, House, on view at Regen Projects. The film’s changing environment characterizes the nomadic existence often portrayed in the artist’s futuristic landscapes. Also on view will be an experimental lightbox, as well as a new photograph derived from the video.

House depicts a couple stoically seated at a table in a residential home. Facing one another, their gaze locked, debris and fragments of the house fall around them. The two protagonists remain untouched as the house crumbles and disappears, leaving only the demarcation of its shape in an empty lot that fades in the closing scene. Throughout the film, the apparatus of destruction is never shown. These devices become part of the film’s expanded narrative, implicating what happens outside the framed image. House is exhibited as an installation shown on double monitors set in the midst of rubble and detritus. The spectator views the film surrounded by remains, becoming immersed in the fragments of what was once a home. Exploring themes of urban isolation and emotional alienation, House is a slow moving film that plays with memory and temporality.

“Do we stand in the calm center of this hurricane of modern life,” the artist asks, “or do we step into its turbulence? And do we have a choice?” His audience may, but Aitken does not. For him, expanded forms of narrative are less experimental than they are obligatory: a proper engagement with the current moment demands more than what a simple tale can provide. At the same time, despite the contemporaneity of his concerns, Aitken’s work shares fully in a classic long-recognized quality of film, its ability to unlock the unconscious by lulling viewers into a receptive state”.(Peter Eleey. “The Exploded Drive-In.” in Sleepwalkers, published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, p.86)

Aitken’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide at institutions including Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Serpentine Gallery, London; and the Vienna Secession. Monographs on the work have been widely published such as Phaidon’s Doug Aitken, Sleepwalkers, 99 Cent Dreams, and a forthcoming monograph to be published by Rizzoli