Doug Aitken

Mirage, Desert X, 2017

Growing up in Redondo Beach, Doug Aitken was constantly aware of the ocean, that vast, rippling expanse that ends suddenly at the horizon. The horizon and beyond: an inspiration for this most experimental, eclectic artist whose works provoke unexpected and profound responses. Trained in illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Aitken has explored photography, video, sculpture, and installations, or happenings, in a mind-boggling collection of projects, and has participated in over 200 art exhibitions throughout the world. He employs moving images to expand the potential of art and the stories art can tell.

What landscape means in our constantly accelerating world is a recurring theme. Aitken’s works often focus on the potential of our Anthropocene to overwhelm nature: climate change, loss of biodiversity, the implacable dominance of technology. In the video Migration (empire), Aitken placed migratory North American mammals in the kinds of (virtually identical) roadside motel rooms we humans occupy when migrating; the humorous and melancholy result features a deer drinking from a swimming pool, a beaver swimming in a bathtub, and a horse watching wild horses on tv.

In one of my favorite projects, Aitken created Mirage at Desert X, the international art exhibition that takes place in, and responds to, the unique environment of California’s Coachella Valley. Aitken’s structure blends so seamlessly into its environment that at times you can’t see it at all. In essence a prototypical California ranch house, Mirage is covered in mirrors, inside and out, that reflect the landscape and offer a kaleidoscope of light and reflection. Mirage has been staged elsewhere, but its desert incarnation best transmits Aitken’s desire to show us as present and absent in the landscape, in California’s much misunderstood desert. 

And back to the sea: in 2016, Aitken launched Under the Ocean. Working with an ocean protection group and MOCA Los Angeles, Aitken moored three geometric pavilions of carefully selected materials to the ocean floor off Catalina Island. Designed to provide a swimming or scuba-diving viewer with a heightened awareness of the rhythms of the ocean, the pavilions, with mirrored sides to reflect light and rough, rock-like sides to harbor aquatic life, combine art and science in Aitken’s elegant way.

In Aitken’s own Venice home, microphones embedded in the staircase cause a percussive rhythm when walked—or danced—down it.