Doug Aitken: Interiors

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) is pleased to present a new installation by the artist Doug Aitken in collaboration with The Fabric Workshop and Museum. This FWM exhibition is the world premier of Interiors (2002), a major new work by Aitken. Interiors will tour nationally.

Doug Aitken has emerged as a leader in the cinematic rethinking of traditional video and video installation art. Over the past two years, Aitken has collaborated with the FWM staff to create an installation of original videos projected onto a series of architectural fabric structures. This departure from the flat, bounded frame allows the artist to further complicate the traditional boundaries of narrative structure. Visitors will view the work by navigating through a complex installation of video projections. Interiors features a series of seemingly disparate filmic narratives, which are eventually joined through a fusion of visuals and sound. Featured characters move through vivid interior environments and exterior landscapes, including a Tokyo penthouse, an urban junkyard, and a Los Angeles helicopter factory.

This exhibition also includes a second work entitled Plateau (2002), a light box (52” x 10’ x 14”) with a composite image of a megalopolis of birdhouses assembled from FedEx boxes designed to resemble famous fascist architecture. Plateau is an edition of six and was created by Doug Aitken in collaboration with the FWM. It is also on view at 303 Gallery, New York.

A new publication by Doug Aitken in collaboration with the FWM accompanies this exhibition and includes text by Michael Speaks and Philippe Parreno as well as an interview with the artist by Russell Ferguson. Combining new, past and found material, this publication resists traditional notions of linearity by threading together a series of overlapping photographic sequences, visual narratives and texts. Central to this publication (and Aitken’s current work) is the idea that the elements through which we define a world or by which we place ourselves are constantly in flux. This publication was designed by Associates in Science.

Recent work by Aitken includes new ocean, a major solo exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in the fall of 2001. Shot in locations such as the Arctic and Argentina, new ocean creates a topography of a world in constant change. Aitken received the International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennale for electric earth (1999), a video installation of both dream and reality documenting the evening journey of a young man through the mechanical sounds of empty urban streets.

Doug Aitken was born in 1968 in Redondo Beach, California. He trained at the Art Center College of Design (BFA, 1991). He was awarded the International Prize at the 48th Venice Biennale (1999) and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award in 2000. His work has been included in the 1997 and 2000 Whitney Biennials and the Biennale of Sydney in 2000. Aitken’s single-channel and installation pieces have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2001); the Dallas Museum of Art (1999);Victoria Miro Gallery, London (1999); 303 Gallery, New York (1999, 1998, 1997 and 1994); and the Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo (1998, 1996). Recent group exhibits include dAPERTutto, Venice Biennale (1999, Harald Szeeman curator); and Unfinished History, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1998, Francesco Bonami curator).

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Doug Aitken: Interiors