Doug Aitken

(American, born 1968)

Doug Aitken is a contemporary American artist known for installations incorporating video, photography, sculpture, and performance. Employing a high level of production value and working in large scale, he creates moving works intended to take the viewer unaware, eliciting responses that are unexpected and profound. Tackling a range of subjects, the artist employs film as a means to expand the traditional notions of art. “We’re living in a tremendously new landscape, and the possibility of what can be created is immense,” Aitken has said. “These tools of the moving image have a relatively short history in art, and what we can do with them is still largely unknown. We are still innovating and finding ways to tell stories.” He has interviewed numerous artists and filmmakers as part of his practice, notably including William Eggleston, Kenneth Anger, Rem Koolhaas. Born in 1968 in Redondo Beach, CA, Aitken went on to study at the Art Center College of Design and moved to New York in 1994. His work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others. Aitken lives and works between New York, NY and Venice, CA.