Doug Aitken

Regen Projects is pleased to present Flags and Debris, an exhibition of new work by Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken. The works form an ecosystem of interconnected mediums, mixing dance, performance, film, sculpture, and handmade objects. Each plays off the other, creating a choreography of images, language, and sound.

The exhibition comprises all new work conceived in the last 10 months, a time of profound change in the face of the pandemic. The body of work reflects the tension collectively felt between our isolation from the physical landscape of the exterior world and newly created spaces for turning inward to explore the subconscious landscape. At heart, the works are a portrait of a society moving toward the future.

Flags and Debris consists of a new series of handmade fabric wall hangings and a hallucinatory multi-screen installation. The fabric works were generated during lockdown when, searching for materials inside his home, Aitken began to cut clothes and fabrics. From these materials he created shapes to articulate words and phrases that spoke of a shifting world in continuous change. Conversely, the physical process of creating these works was a study of stillness. They resemble flags and banners while also suggesting protective coverings for warmth and security.

The collaged layers of fabric build into visual and written abstractions. These works provoke reflection on the nature of reality and visions of the future: Fragmented phrases like ‘Noise,’ ‘Digital Detox,’ ‘Data Mining,’ ‘Nowhere/Somewhere,’ and ‘Resist Algorithms’ appear like handcrafted digital glitches, while other works ruminate in full prose, including an excerpt from a text by Joan Didion, whose writing has served as an inspiration to Aitken.

I Lost Track
2020
Mixed fabrics
131 x 106 1/2 x 3 inches (332.7 x 270.5 x 7.6 cm)

Nowhere/Somewhere
2020
Mixed fabrics
111 x 95 1/2 x 3 inches (281.9 x 242.6 x 7.6 cm)

We The People
2020
Mixed fabrics
105 x 110 x 3 inches (266.7 x 279.4 x 7.6 cm)

“Aitken’s forms live between languages, one expressive, one critical; one emancipatory, one as suave as the advertising persuasion; one constrained and ordered, one open; one reductivist, one porous to the natural sensuality of bodies and landscapes—porous to promiscuity, for which sensuality is a promise of something else, an escape from a growing, controlling uniformity and the morphology of mass communication. From this tension emerges an emancipatory and creative space with no walls; a place common to many, to come and contemplate the world, off the grid, where one can say to another, eye to eye: ‘you are here and so am I.’”

—Philippe Vergne in “You Are Here and So Am I,” Doug Aitken: Electric Earth, 2016

Target
2020
Mixed fabrics
116 x 119 1/2 x 3 inches (294.6 x 303.5 x 7.6 cm)

Digital Detox
2020
Mixed fabrics
115 x 102 1/4 x 3 inches (292.1 x 259.7 x 7.6 cm)

When I Was Alive
2020
Mixed fabrics
103 x 184 x 3 inches (261.6 x 467.4 x 7.6 cm)

Data Mining
2020
Mixed fabrics
112 1/2 x 99 x 3 inches (285.8 x 251.5 x 7.6 cm)

Resist Algorithms
2020
Mixed fabrics
118 x 98 1/2 x 3 inches (299.7 x 250.2 x 7.6 cm)

“One of the most profound things that any kind of act of creation can give you is to engage you in the present, to suddenly bring you into the present. Those moments are so fleeting and rare, but when you do find them, it is the rarest drug; it’s a private nirvana. It’s something that is inexplicable.”

—Doug Aitken in Wallpaper, 2019

Flags and Debris
2021
Video installation with three channels of video (color, sound), three projections
TRT: 13:20 minutes
Installation dimensions variable, apx:
176 x 576 x 480 inches (447 x 1463 x 1219 cm)
Edition of 4, 2 APs

Aitken also initiated a series of impromptu performances throughout Los Angeles using the new fabric works. He filmed these performances, translating them into the new multi-screen installation. The performances are based on choreographies Aitken developed working with LA Dance Project. Wrapped in the artworks, the dancers moved through desolate industrial locations and empty urban spaces. Their movements were unique to each setting, activating the spaces with kinetic energy.

The film captures fleeting moments and mysterious and random encounters. Sleepwalking bodies are wrapped and covered, moving, jerking, fighting, and thrusting through the nocturnal, desolate city. The fabric moves through the wind as though empty — phantom presences roaming through spaces. The film reflects snapshots of a surreal life, as if seen out of the corner of the eye, pushing one to explore a modern landscape that is in continuous flux. It is set in shadowland spaces such as freeway underpasses, urban rivers, and desolate industrial areas where empty sites are transformed from passive to active. Bodies occupying the artworks shapeshift under the layers of fabric in movements that explore the unseen and hidden worlds of interior thought.

ZOO
2020
Chromogenic transparency on acrylic in aluminum lightbox with LEDs
39 1/2 x 122 7/8 x 7 inches (100.3 x 312.1 x 17.8 cm)
Edition of 4, 2 AP

“Time is the structure underneath everything we experience and every decision we make. …Los Angeles is not a city but a series of fragments—all separate pieces of experience, places, encounters, and information. In this sprawling city, you can author your own story any way you decide to. Simply by turning left, right, or driving straight, you change the narrative.”

—Doug Aitken in Purple, 2018

please do not include us...: Aperture series
2020
Chromogenic transparency on acrylic in aluminum lightbox with LEDs
46 1/4 inches (117.5 cm) diameter
7 1/2 inches (19.1 cm) depth
Edition of 4, 2 AP

tell me why you stay away?: Aperture series
2020
Chromogenic transparency on acrylic in aluminum lightbox with LEDs
46 1/4 inches (117.5 cm) diameter
7 1/2 inches (19.1 cm) depth
Edition of 4, 2 AP

Flags and Debris

January 16 – March 13, 2021

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