Doug Aitken is a quintessential Los Angeles artist. Working across multiple platforms—“photography, sculpture, publications, sound, and single- and multi-channel video installations”[1]—he employs the high production values and superficial slickness of Hollywood. His art is all about spectacle, whether it’s Electric Earth (1997), his multi-screen video in which a solitary protagonist dances his way through a pulsing, nocturnal urban landscape, or his recent endeavor Station to Station, an art and music event that barreled its way across the country via rail, bringing multimedia enticements to nine cities along the route like an old-time traveling picture show. Still Life, his fourth and latest exhibition at Regen Projects, is no less dazzling, but as the title of the show implies, it slows down his usually frenetic pace to something more meditative. As he remarked to the L.A. Times, “I felt that our society is moving so fast with information that one of the more radical things I could do is actually to preserve it all, crystallize it all.”[2]

Doug Aitken. NOW (Blue Mirror), 2014; wood, mirror, and glass; 48 1/4 x 108 1/2 x 18 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Aitken has created a fantasy landscape in the gallery, punching holes in some of the walls, artfully building out others so they appear to have been partially knocked down. It is visibly artificial, but impressively so, and paired with the absence of light, goes a long way toward erasing or at least diminishing the impression of a white cube. It also serves to slow down movement through the space—viewers are not as likely to rush through an exhibit if they’re wandering in an unfamiliar setting in the dark.

The works in the show take familiar objects, images, or words and present them in a way that is foreign or unsettling—making spectacular the mundane. A series of mirrored pieces depict single words—“END,” “NOW,” “EXIT”—that are about a moment in time, rather than duration. They are impeccably made, each gem-like (crystalline) letter crafted out of multiple planes of colored glass. They encourage gallerygoers to spend time moving around them to see how the other works are reflected in their facets. It is not difficult to get lost, but the construction is so compelling that the words can seem like little more than a linguistic substrate for infinite visual permutations.

Doug Aitken. END/RUN (Timeline), 2014; clear mirror, resin, concrete powder
coated steel; 72 x 132 3/4 x 36 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Another text-based work that takes this sense of absorption a step further is END/RUN (Timeline) (2014), a massive concrete rectangle that bisects a hole in the gallery wall. On one end, the word “END” is cut out of the concrete, and on the other end, “RUN.” Looking into the piece through the letters on either end reveals a long, kaleidoscopic mirrored interior, with the gallery visible through the cut-out letters on the other side. An end run is the long way around something, an evasion or an attempt to go around the defense instead of through them. This is precisely what viewers are compelled to do: to enact a kind of performance of their own as they walk all the way around the gallery wall to fully grasp the work. Once there, the interior is similarly enthralling, changing with every shift of the viewer’s gaze.

Doug Aitken. Twilight, 2014; cast resin, acrylic, and responsive/generative LED system; 71 3/4 x 54 1/4 x 54 1/4 in. © Doug Aitken. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

In addition to these text-based works are interactive sculptures that inspire contemplation. Twilight (2014) is a cast resin-and-acrylic reproduction of a payphone that glows from within in response to a viewer’s proximity. Amidst the hustle of the streets, the pay phone is one of the few places where you are encouraged to stop moving. It is also an obsolete form of communication, and the glowing, pale white beacon can be seen as an elegiac monument to slower forms of interaction. It changes in response to the nearness of a body as if trying to communicate, but its message is indecipherable. Down a long, dark corridor is another glowing white sculpture, a miniature cave scene of stalactites and stalagmites around a small pool, Eyes Closed, Wide Awake (Sonic Fountain II) (2014). Water drips into the pool and the sound is amplified. The effect is mesmerizing, but it is unclear if this is the result of the expertly manufactured artwork as much as the natural scenario it replicates.

Installation view of Still Life at Regen Projects, Los Angeles. September 6 – October 11, 2014. Photo: Brian Forrest. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Next to these works, a series of light boxes fails to elicit much wonder. They depict tropes of southern California life—cars, pools, roadside signs—and attempt again to make alien the familiar. The outline of a car is filled in with rocks, and the pool is paired with an astronomical image of a red sun, for example. A moonscape in the shape of the letters “HOME” comes off as trite. These works share all of the cinematic polish of Aitken’s other works but lack their dynamism.

With Still Life, Doug Aitken has slowed down his pace but lost none of the spectacle of earlier works. Much of the show is entrancing; the high production quality and craftsmanship draw us in but risk becoming the focus at times. The best pieces in the show work because, as with the best Hollywood films, they present a glittering surface, beneath which is a strong underlying narrative.

Doug Aitken: Still Life is on view at Regen Projects in Los Angeles through October 11, 2014.

[1] Exhibition press release

[2] http://www.latimes.com/fashion/alltherage/la-ar-doug-aitken-exhibition-20140908-story.html