Doug Aitken: Return to the Real

 

 
'We are living in a new era, one of complete connectivity, where screen space has become seemingly equal to the physical landscape. This surreal shift in evolution brings us into uncharted waters, a new frontier, one for which we are not fully prepared. These artworks question how we navigate a world of increasing speed and transition, the direction of where we can go and how we can confront the future.' – Doug Aitken
 
 
Return to the Real, an exhibition of new works by Doug Aitken, was on view at Victoria Miro Wharf Road from 2 October to 20 December 2019. Conceived as a unified composition of sound, light, form and movement, the exhibition explores our rapidly changing relationships to one another and the world around us in an age dominated by technology. 
 
 
A starting point for Return to the Real is the idea of the contemporary individual and the ways in which humans are continuously both in and out of sync. Diametrically opposed notions of connectivity and freedom, collectivity and isolation are highlighted, reminding us how this new frontier is being shaped and is transforming our lives in real time and, in many ways, defining our generation. Return to the Real creates a fragmented narrative of today's unprecedented digital landscape, in which artworks function like signposts, inviting the viewer to pause, stop and evaluate their surroundings. 

Wallpaper* presents an 18-page journey into Americana with Doug Aitken: a portfolio of  photographs by the artist featured in the November 2019 issue, alongside an interview about making the new works for his Victoria Miro exhibition

Read the interview in *Wallpaper

About Doug Aitken

 

Defying definitions of genre, Doug Aitken explores every medium, from film and installations to architectural interventions. His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions around the world, in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, the Vienna Secession, the Serpentine Gallery, and the Centre Georges Pompidou. He participated in both the 1997 and 2000 Whitney Biennials, and earned the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999 for the installation electric earth. Aitken received the 2012 Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, and the 2013 Smithsonian Magazine American Ingenuity Award: Visual Arts. In 2016 he received the Americans for the Arts National Arts Award: Outstanding Contributions to the Arts. In 2017 Aitken became the inaugural recipient of the Frontier Art Prize, a new contemporary art award that supports an artist to pursue bold projects that challenge the boundaries of knowledge and experience to reimagine the future of humanity. 

 

Read more

Credits

 

Installation view, All Doors Open, 2019

Installation view, Inside Out, 2019

 

All works © Doug Aitken
Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich; Victoria Miro, London/Venice; and Regen Projects, Los Angeles

 

Portrait by Carmen Ellis

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