Doug Aitken, New Era (Installation View), via Art Observed

Walking into the shadowy depths of 303 Gallery this month, viewers are confronted with an almost completely destabilizing series of visuals.  Huge explosions of color and line expand out from the center of television screens placed in the pitch-black space, swirling movements and patterns created by arrangements of various technologic peripherals and paraphernalia.  Accentuated by the hall of mirrors the artist has constructed inside the gallery space, the video creates a alienating effect, the feeling of being awash in technologic constructs we are inventing faster than we can fully comprehend their effects on communication, knowledge or expression. (more…)

Doug Aitken has executed a new work in Monte Carlo, employing a sky-writer to execute a swirling, twisting whorl of smoke that stretched eight miles wide, accompanied by a live orchestration.  The work, titled Modern Soul, was part of the Monaco “Nuit Blanche.” (more…)

With artist Doug Aitken’s The Source series of creative dialogues has opened at Sundance Film Festival, he sat down with New York Times Magazine to discuss the work, his recent Station to Station project, and his ideas of creative immediacy.  “I see it as trying to reduce and reduce and reduce,” he says. “Bringing things back to a candid and immediate conversation between two people. Having something that has very little filtration, that is not reprocessed by a critic and is not repurposed through the filter of cultural history.” (more…)

Outside at Riverfront Studios, via Daniel Creahan for Art Observed

Station to Station, the traveling art happening organized and led by Doug Aitken, kicked off Friday night at Riverfront Studios in Brooklyn, featuring a vibrant array of music, performance, video, installations and appearances that launched Aitken and his traveling band of artists and musicians on a nationwide tour, which will conclude in Oakland at the end of September.  With different artists and performers appearing on each stop, the event will continue to shift and evolve with each subsequent event. (more…)

The Opening for Doug Aitken, 100 YRS, Courtesy of 303 Gallery

Working across a broad body of media and techniques, including photography, sculpture, video, installation, sound art and architectural interventions, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken’s work frequently explores concepts of rhythm, repetition and duration, exploring interrelations between time, memory and space and the subsequent fluctuations of meaning and understanding caused by their interactions.  His work has been ehxibited in a variety of institutions and contexts, including his enormous Song1 installation on the outside of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, as well as his upcoming video art installation at the Seattle Art Museum.

Doug Aitken, MORE (Shattered Pour) (2013), Courtesy of 303 Gallery

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Artist Doug Aitken is currently preparing to unveil a “digital land artwork” at the Seattle Art Museum.  Titled Mirror, the work consists of thin strips of LED lights and digital video of Seattle and the surrounding regions, and will be on view for the public beginning on March 24th.  “Land art from the 1960s and 1970s exists in remote locations. I was interested in creating something very urban,” Aitken says.  (more…)

Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Maurizio Cattelan, “Catttelan,” 1994, neon, 90 x 47 x 3.5; 40 x 40 x 3.5, Courtesy Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

On September 25th 2012, the Whitechapel Gallery in London opened a special exhibition composed of works from the Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, one of the most prominent private collections in Europe. The gallery’s year-long series, Think Twice, is divided into four parts, the first of which is dedicated to works of Maurizio Cattelan – many of which have not been seen in the UK for over 20 years – on display until December 2nd, 2012.

Maurizio Cattelan, “Bidibidobidiboo,” 1996, Taxidermied squirrel, ceramic, Formica, wood, paint and steel, Courtesy Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo

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Image: Doug Aitken, Tilda Swinton in The Source, 2012, via Sky Arts Ignition

American artist Doug Aitken has his first public installation in the UK entitled The Source, which asks a variety of leading arts practitioners questions about where their creative ideas come from. Viewers can watch video conversations with artists such as Tilda Swinton, Jack Pierson, Jack White, and Mike Kelley, projected inside a temporary structure on Liverpool’s historic Albert Dock built in collaboration with renowned British architect David Adjaye.

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Toby Ziegler‘s The Cripples, image via Art Observed

Back in 2003 in Frieze’s first year, no major international art fair had ever been hosted in London before. Frieze Art Fair, organized by Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp, has helped take London from being a city without a focused art scene to its current state at the center of the European art market. Now in its tenth year, Frieze Art Fair in London’s Regent’s Park has seen around 60,000 visitors, with 264 dealers from 35 countries hoping to sell work (valuing an estimated  £230m) created by more than 2,400 artists within 175 of the world’s leading galleries.

An Aaron Young motorcycle burn out work at Massimo de Carlo in Milan, photo via Art Observed

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Image: Sean Daly, Shaun Regen, Kathryn Bigelow, and John Loga via Vogue

Shaun Caley Regen opened her new location in Los Angeles last night at 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, in a newly developing section of Hollywood, just east of Highland Avenue. The new space was designed by architect Michael Maltzan, creating a museum-like exhibition venue.

Image: Regen Projects’ inaugural exhibition via Regen Projects

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Sophie Hastings of the Financial Times profiles Doug Aitken, “a champion of non-linear art.” His exhibition, “The Source,” will be opening at the Tate Liverpool on September 15th.

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Architect David Adjaye and artist Doug Aitken have collaborated on a pavilion for the Tate Liverpool designed to create a cultural destination away from the confines of its traditional gallery space. The pavilion, composed of corrugated acrylic, bitumen panels, and wood framing, will mark Aitken’s first public installation in the UK. Forming a gallery during the day, the perimeter walls will display a projection of Aitken’s work at night, similar to that recently displayed at the Hirshhorn Museum.

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Doug Aitken awarded this year’s Nam June Paik Art Center Prize, which recognizes artists who have made creative impacts in their artistic field with their experimentation and innovation. The American artist is the sole 2012 recipient and is invited to have a featured solo exhibition.

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Louise Bourgeois, Untitled (2004). All photos on site by Art Observed.

The last of the throng at the first Frieze Art Fair on Randall’s Island in New York City petered out Monday afternoon yet, the most avid collectors simply shifted course to the remainder auction sales at Christie’s and Philips de Pury. Overall, gallerists at the fair appeared to be immensely pleased with the inaugural event, some booths claiming blowout sales, while others were content with merely executing reserve transactions.

John Ahearn casts a fairgoer in plaster as part of Frieze Projects

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Gavin Brown and Mark Ruffalo cooking sausages. All photographs by Aubrey Roemer for Art Observed.

The always fresh but now venerable Frieze Art Fair of Regent’s Park, London, has successfully completed its maiden voyage to this side of the Atlantic. The pavilion, designed by Brooklyn-based SO-IL Architects, places Frieze New York on Randall’s Island Park from May 4-7, 2012. The fair is being held in a distinctly snakelike structure that houses 180 leading contemporary galleries presenting works by more than 1,000 artists. There are a number of culinary options as well: Roberta’s, The Fat Radish Café, Frankie’s Spuntino Restaurant, Sant Abroeus Café and the Standard Biergarten.

Entrance to the Frieze Art Fair

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Doug Aitken, Song 1 (2012). All images via Hirschhorn Museum.

The work of LA based artist Doug Aitken spans across a range of media and genres, traversing formal and conceptual terrains from watercolor to Fluxus-like happenings, book publishing to operas, and photography to public art. Largely known for his video installations, his work is equally anchored in audio, shifting in recent years to engage closely with sound as an index of space and time, deeply resonant with the contemporary human experience. The collusion of visual modalities with sound experiments and musical production propels his investigation of perceptual experience in his most recent work, Song 1, now exhibited at the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington DC, on view from dusk until midnight through May 13. This spectacular temporary exhibition epitomizes the fluid integration of music and image in a site-specific installation that literally inverts the art museum and transforms the surrounding landscape into a 360 degree cinema. Projected upon Gordon Bunshaft’s cylindrical cement fortress, Aitken has composed a 35 minute loop of video that revolves around the museum’s cylindrical facade, veiling its bulky structure in a graceful and arresting play of light. Yet it is the accompanying score that is truly at the core of this project, comprised of a succession of covers of the song “I Only Have Eyes for You,” interpreted by a diverse checklist of musicians, which feature as the organizing principle governing an entangled loop of fragmented narratives and flashing images.

Doug Aitken, Song 1 (2012)

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‪‬Doug Aitken’s ‘Acid Modernism’ house in Venice, California is profiled on NY Times, featuring ‘sonic’ tables and stairs, secret rooms, and a ‘light house,’ built on the same footprint from 2010 ‘House’ video piece, “The goal was to create a warm, organic modernism that’s also perceptual and hallucinatory” [AO Newslink]

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‪‬Doug Aitken to illuminate Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC with 360-Degree “Liquid Architecture” Projection This Spring [AO Newslink]

Read article via Art Daily

Allora & Calzadilla, Umbrella and Bell (2011), front; Anish Kapoor, Untitled (2011), behind. At Lisson Gallery, booth J1. All photos on site for Art Observed by Caroline Claisse.

International collectors and art enthusiasts filled the Miami Beach Convention Center for the Wednesday preview of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011. While the maze of gallery booths could seem overwhelming, buyers were able to navigate through for a solid day of sales and works placed on reserve. Larger galleries such as Gagosian, David Zwirner, and Sprüth Magers sold several works and editions thereof. Speaking with Neil Wenman of Hauser & Wirth, “We’ve had a great response on the opening day. In particular for works by Thomas Houseago, Rashid Johnson, Paul McCarthy, Matthew Day Jackson, Richard Jackson—all works sold and all available editions.” Jenny Holzer’s new paintings at Sprüth Magers sold for upwards of $300,000, as well as Condos and Krugers at the booth. Lesser-known galleries were pleased to gain the exposure the fair offers; if not selling right away, interest was high and therefore also prospects for the remainder of the fair. Gallery Arratia Beer said the crowd was very engaged and informed, also saying, “The fair feels very international. It’s also good to see young internationals here too.” The newer Latin American presence was reportedly strong, both exhibiting and buying, as expected in Miami as opposed to the Frieze or FIAC fairs across the Atlantic earlier this year. Celebrities on hand included Julian Schnable, Eli Broad, Brett Rattner, Naomi Campbell, and Sean Combs/P. Diddy.

Larry Gagosian

Entrance D at the Miami Convention Center

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Nowness presents a city of moving images with Doug Aitken’s new video work, Altered Earth.  Says Aitken, “I felt like I was holding the earth in my hand.” [AO Newslink]

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NY Times reports on Doug Aitken’s exploration of alienation in the modern age in new installation “Black Mirror,” featuring Chloë Sevigny [AO Newslink]

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Yutaka Sone Little Manhattan (2007-2009) at David Zwirner Gallery – All images by Caroline Claisse for Art Observed

Art Observed remains on site in Basel, Switzerland for Art 42 Basel 2011.  The following is our second of the photosets of the main fair.  Stay tuned for more coverage of the main fair before the end of the week as well as profiles of the satellite exhibitions and events.

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Artist Wim Delvoye before one of his sculptures at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin

more images and links after the jump…

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Doug Aitken, House, 2010. Via Regen Projects

Regen Projects is currently exhibiting Doug Aitken’s recent work: House.  The work is both fiction and narrative—a duality that exists in much of his work.  The video of his parents sitting calmly face to face as their home is demolished around them and its surrounding installation of debris provides a dramatized element to an event that actually occurred in Aitken’s life.

Sex, 2010. Via NYT Magazine.

In addition to the central installation of House, the exhibition has several wall hangings, titled living words, that incorporate whole internal ecosystems. The piece SEX ruminates on a central fixture of human life and connects it to the natural world.

More story after the jump…

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