Microcosmos features a new series of handmade fabric wall hangings that, engaging with the physical act of making, visually articulate a world that is driven by information and continuously in flux. The exhibition coincides with a major new site-specific installation, Green Lens, by the artist in Venice, and the European premiere of his 2021 work Flags and Debris, which will feature as part of Biennale Danza, 15th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, directed by Wayne McGregor.
Doug Aitken’s works, at their core, invite us to consider the nature of our present and signal possibilities for the future. His latest textiles are a continuation of a body of work generated over the past year and take as their starting point clothing and other everyday found materials that the artist was able to access within his home. Cutting fragments and reassembling them into abstract visual fields, Aitken has created elaborate wall hangings, patterns emerging and disappearing within their collaged layers. Foregrounded throughout these works are poetic tensions between the digital and the handmade, fast and slow media. Repeating elements within the works appear like handcrafted digital glitches, while the physical process of their creation suggests the slow-paced craft of quilting. Resembling flags and banners, mandalas and targets, they also bear connotations of protection, comfort or shelter – the very nature of cloth being at the same time intimate, personal and universal. These shifting symbolic qualities resonate with the dynamic abstractions of each composition: these are signs, devoid of text, that allow for open-ended investigations into our collective experience.
Accompanying the wall hangings is a sequence of floor-based works created using a similar method to Aitken’s fabric collages. These operate between the elevated artistic genre of soft-sculpture and as functional furnishings that invite visitors to pause, enabling physical activation of the works and an embodied experience of the show.
The final work on view, positioned at the entrance of the exhibition, is a single watercolour depicting a Muybridgelike motion-study image of a female figure rising up from a seated to a standing position. Echoing Aitken’s recent illuminated figurative sculptures that pulse with light, this work surges with a force suggestive of a personal and cultural awakening.
This summer of activity marks a significant return to the city of Venice for Doug Aitken, who was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion for his electric earth installation at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999.
Green Lens, a site-specific installation
‘Green Lens is a living artwork. It is simultaneously an artwork, installation and stage. It’s like a lighthouse that one can journey to and have a very personal experience, while it also transmits light, ideas and questions. A focal point that allows all of us to share our ideas and visions for the future post Covid... a celebration and inquiry into the future.’ – Doug Aitken Located on the island of Isola della Certosa, Green Lens is a living experiential artwork and destination. From the exterior it creates a choreography of changing reflections of clouds, mist and wild green vegetation. As day turns to night Green Lens glows and becomes a kinetic light sculpture and sound composition. Green Lens will be activated with a sequence of performances and conversations that are thought-provoking and provocative, focusing on the future as interpreted by musicians, speakers and dancers. These activations will be filmed by Aitken and released for the public to have access to this living artwork and stage for voices and culture. Green Lens is an artwork by Doug Aitken, commissioned by Anthony Vaccarello in partnership with Saint Laurent.
Flags and Debris
In Aitken’s video Flags and Debris, pulses of electricity merge with the human heartbeat and move through a landscape that is expansive and anonymous. Set against the backdrop of an unrecognisably empty Los Angeles, filmed during periods of lockdown in 2020, unseen members of the Los Angeles Dance Project move, ghost-like underneath Aitken’s textile works. Receiving its European premiere as part of Biennale Danza, 15th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, directed by Wayne McGregor, Flags and Debris is featured during a weekend of dance film screenings and will be shown in a programme that also features works by Merce Cunningham and others, held at Teatro Piccolo Arsenale at 2pm on Sunday 25 July 2021.
