Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
"Doug Aitken’s images long to convey meaning, linger for the sake of a hopeful connection, document without the need to instruct. How incredibly beautiful, he asks, is our world?" Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, excerpted from Doug Aitken: 99 Cent Dreams, published by the Aspen Art Museum.
Edited by Arno Baudin. Text by Neville Wakefield. Interview with Doug Aitken.
With numerous special printing features, this luxurious accordion-fold volume documents and embodies Aitken’s exploration of mirrored surfaces in architecture
Hbk, 9.5 x 12.75 in. / 168 pgs / 90 color. | 4/16/2024 | In stock $150.00
Los Angeles-based Doug Aitken is one of the most important artists of the 90s generation. His work in multi-screen video and photographic installation has literally changed the artistic landscape, incorporating architecture, film and sound in new and challenging ways. Aitken has also become one of the last decade's most incisive interviewers of other artists, filmmakers and architects, as his many books and magazine articles attest.
read the full post
Published by JRP|Editions/Zolo Press. Edited by Arno Baudin. Text by Neville Wakefield. Interview with Doug Aitken.
A site-specific installation successively exhibited in the California desert outside Palm Springs, a defunct Detroit bank and the Alpine landscape of Gstaad, LA/New York–based artist Doug Aitken’s (born 1968) Mirage is inspired by the ranch-style suburban American house and is entirely composed of reflective mirrored surfaces. A visual echo-chamber, its mirrored surfaces form a life-size kaleidoscope that absorbs and reflects the landscape.
Dedicated to the three iterations of the Mirage, this publication offers the reader an experiential book that shares some of the characteristics of the installation: the immersive emotion, the disrupted perception, the merging of the viewer and the landscape. The book gathers previously unpublished photo-documentation on the installations, plus drawings and more. Featuring cold foils, special inks, silver printing and bound accordion-style to reflect the mirror-like quality of Mirage, this limited edition, copublished with Zolo Press, is certain to soon become a collectible item.
Published by JRP|Ringier. Edited by Lionel Bovier. Text by Steve Erickson.
The first book entirely dedicated to the sculptures of multimedia artist Doug Aitken (born 1968), this volume offers an overview of his three-dimensional works and includes a specially commissioned text by acclaimed novelist Steve Erickson. Designed in the artist's studio, the publication is organized as a graphic novel more than an inventory, while offering complete information on the pieces in the index. Using words and images, technology and human perception, to trigger personal reactions from the readers, the works are combined here in a new form, assembled as they are in printed form as a "Gesamt-exhibition," one that is unique to the medium of the book.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Edited by Matthias Ulrich, Max Hollein. Text by Matthias Ulrich, Martin Herbert, April Lamm, Jörg Heiser, Dominic Eichler, Joseph Akel.
The spectacular film and sound pieces of Doug Aitken (born 1968) take visitors on a synaesthetic journey around the world and into themselves, in a maelstrom of expressive images and rhythmic landscapes. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Schirn, this book includes over 250 images--of sculptures, site-specific sound installation and more--offering an overview of the artist's heterogeneous oeuvre. Aitken's kaleidoscopic universe revolves around life's existential questions, without supplying simple answers. Instead, the artist lends expression to an almost naïve fascination with being human and people's sense of collectivity and cooperation. Consequently, the recent projects by the Los Angeles-based artist have redefined the exhibition format. With essays by leading curators and art writers, this accessible hardcover documents the interactive and varied work of this contemporary giant.
Published by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Text by Kerry Brougher, Barney Hoskyns, Dean Kuipers.
In a bold effort to redefine the public exhibition space, the Hirshhorn Museum has commissioned Doug Aitken’s most ambitious work to date. Song 1 is an unprecedented 360-degree moving-image work, requiring 11 high-definition projectors, that seamlessly blends imagery to illuminate the façade of the museum’s iconic cylindrical building--transforming it into “liquid architecture”--and create an urban soundscape. The scope of the artwork is large, yet at its core is a basic concept. Based around a single song, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” the piece explores the idea of pure communication through the perfect pop song. This distinctive book, designed by the artist and shaped to emulate the form of the Hirshhorn itself, visually interprets the work and places the work in a broader art historical and cultural context.
PUBLISHER Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 13 x 8 in. / 120 pgs / 150 color / 20 bw.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 8/31/2012 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2012 p. 97
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780978906320TRADE List Price: $50.00 CDN $67.50 GBP £45.00
Published by DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art. Preface by Dakis Joannou.
Doug Aitken’s Black Mirror is a meditation on the rootlessness and the extreme virtuality of contemporary existence. Comprised of a site-specific multi-channel video installation and a live theater performance at the Deste Foundation Project Space, Slaughterhouse, on the Greek island of Hydra, it stars Chloë Sevigny as a nomadic individual traversing airport terminals, hotel lobbies and car rental kiosks, communicating in quick pulses and travelling long distances for short meetings. The video installation was shot in and around Athens and Hydra, as well as Cancun, Mexico; Albuquerque and Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff and Arcosanti, Arizona; and Palm Springs, California. The performance was staged on a barge off Athens, and featured Sevigny, gospel singers, strippers and musicians, Los Angeles underground rock duo No Age and Greek percussionists.
Published by D.A.P/Distributed Art Publishers/MOCA, LA/JRP|Ringier.
Sunsets over the Pacific. "Surfers." "Movie stars." "Coyotes in the street." "Sex." Doug Aitken's The Idea of the West gathers the responses of 1,000 people on the streets who were asked "What is your idea of the West?" and assembles this amazing manifesto from their replies. Through an assortment of more than 200 color and black-and-white images juxtaposed with responses to this question, The Idea of the West takes the reader on a high-speed journey across space and time to trace the mythology of the New West. The volume also features conversational fragments by a host of creators based in the Pacific region, including Devendra Banhart, Bruce Brown, Charles Burnett, Exene Cervenka, Fallen Fruit, Simone Forti, Fritz Haeg, Miranda July, No Age, Raymond Pettibon, Rodarte and Ryan Trecartin. A hybrid artist's book that brings together elements from classic 1970s photobooks, agit-prop paperbacks and music zines, The Idea of the West reflects Aitken's always expansive approach to art-making.
Known primarily for multi-screen video installations that function as immersive explorations of the experience of time and location, Doug Aitken has also directed many live happenings, including his "Broken Screen" happening in Los Angeles and the "99 Cent Dreams" and "Sonic" happenings in New York. In 2009, Aitken orchestrated a real-time opera that assembled auctioneers performing against the rhythms of his "Sonic Table," at Il Tempo del Postino, at Theatre Basel and presented a performance during the opening of his multichannel video installation frontier in Rome.
Published by Aspen Art Museum. Text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
This lavishly illustrated artist's book is the largest and most ambitious publication yet produced by the Los Angeles-based video artist and photographer Doug Aitken--an artist known for his groundbreaking publications. Featuring a short text by Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson, Director and Chief Curator of the Aspen Art Museum, it focuses on Aitken's still images, more than half of which have never been reproduced before. Known primarily for his multi-screen video installations, Aitken has gained international recognition for his immersive explorations of the experience of time and location. His exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum was the first dedicated solely to his photography. From nighttime cityscapes to deserted gas stations, airports and bus depots, Aitken's dreamlike photographs contain the same spatial and temporal dislocation and narrative suggestion as his installations.
PUBLISHER Aspen Art Museum
BOOK FORMAT Hardback, 11.75 x 9.75 in. / 224 pgs / 216 illustrations.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 4/1/2008 Out of stock indefinitely
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: SPRING 2008 p. 94
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780934324373TRADE List Price: $75.00 CDN $99.00 GBP £65.00
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry and Anne Pasternak. Text by Klaus Biesenbach, Peter Eleey, Doug Aitken.
In January and February of 2007, the Los Angeles-based video artist Doug Aitken projected a new work, commissioned by The Museum of Modern Art and the New York arts institution Creative Time, onto seven facades on and around MoMA's fabled West Fifty-third Street building. Sleepwalkers was both inspired by, and offered in opposition to, the densely built midtown environment; it integrated itself onto the surfaces on which it was projected, and it challenged viewers' perceptions of architecture and public space. The piece, which follows the trajectories of five characters as they make their way through nocturnal New York, explores Aitken's key recurring themes: broken and recombined narratives, the rhythm and flow of information and images, and the relationship of individuals to their environment. The viewer, as a pedestrian, a participant and a vital component of New York's energetic system, becomes part of the work, and of the interactive personal landscape that Aitken creates in and among the hard-edged concrete and glass language of Manhattan's architecture. In addition to documentation of Sleepwalkers, this publication contains an overview of the artist's work to date, with special emphasis on works since 2001. It also contains conversations between Aitken and a variety of artists, architects, writers and performers about different elements of city life, from the lit signage of Times Square to a taxi driver's eye view of the streets.
Published by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers. Edited by Noel Daniel.
Broken Screen is comprised of informal conversations between artist Doug Aitken and a roster of 26 carefully chosen artists, filmmakers, designers and architects. Part guidebook and part manifesto, the book takes a fresh look at what it's like to create work in a world that has become increasingly fragmentary. Through casual and direct discussions Broken Screen offers a detailed navigation through the ideas behind the important yet under-documented visual language of nonlinear narratives, split screens and fragmentary visual planes that define the most progressive moving images today. Presented in 26 illustrated chapters, the focus here lies on the shattering of the linear narrative in the visual arts through the use of image-based work to articulate the speed and fragmentation of modern life. Perhaps best of all, Broken Screen is a unique opportunity for readers to learn the thoughts and personal beliefs of these artists in their own words and imagery, unencumbered by critical or commercial filters, and communicated in the manner of a conversation between friends. It also seeks to produce a cultural manifesto for new communication, expression and understanding in both the present and future--much as Marshall McLuhan's Medium is the Massage did. With its accessible conversational style, forward-thinking graphic design and over 300 high-contrast images, Broken Screen extends across many disciplines including art, film, design and architecture, and is sure to become an important document of our time. Aitken's 26 interviewees are Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Robert Altman, Kenneth Anger, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Chris Burden, Bruce Conner, Claire Denis, Stan Douglas, Olafur Eliasson, Pablo Ferro, Mike Figgis, Werner Herzog, Gary Hill, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Rem Koolhaas, Greg Lynn, Carsten Nicolai, Richard Prince, Pipilotti Rist, Ugo Rondinone, Ed Ruscha, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Robert Wilson and Amos Vogel.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Artwork by Doug Aitken, Philippe Parreno. Edited by Marion Boulton Stroud, Russell Ferguson, Beatrix Ruf. Contributions by Michael Speaks.
Doug Aitken makes art at the edge of the world, with a kind of primitivism and ritualism unusual for video but mysteriously present in work that hovers at the edge where desert meets sea. Rise presents stills and installation shots from rise, the mirror, moving, these restless minds, 2-second separation, and i am in you, alongside an essay and interview with the artist.
Published by Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Artwork by Doug Aitken. Edited by Michael Holm, Anders Kold. Text by Poul Erik Tojner.
Doug Aitken makes art at the edge of the world, with a kind of primitivism and ritualism unusual for video but mysteriously present in work that hovers at the edge where desert meets sea. Rise presents stills and installation shots from rise, the mirror, moving, these restless minds, 2-second separation, and i am in you, alongside an essay and interview with the artist.
Published by Hatje Cantz. Essays by Francesco Bonami, Henry Grunwald, Jorg Heiser and Gijs van Tuyl.
The installation "Electric Earth," debuted at the 1999 Venice Biennale, brought international recognition to the video and media artist Doug Aitkin. In the piece, a dancer roams a transitory realm of wasted landscapes. Aitken, whose protagonists are usually natural landscapes and cityscapes, here links the electrified structures of our urban world with the nervous system of the human body. The piece, with its pop-surrealist overtones, also reveals Aitken's roots as a director of music videos. This artist's book, laid out in a landscape format, presents fascinating views of natural and urban lanscapes and structures from the video. Gijs van Tuyl, in his essay, writes, "You don't have to look through it passively from A to Z...it offers up a space in which the reader can move freely...in order to create a story in the here and now, in the flow of time."
Doug Aitken: Sculptures
Doug Aitken
Doug Aitken: Song 1
Doug Aitken: Black Mirror
Doug Aitken: The Idea of the West
Doug Aitken: 99 Cent Dreams
Doug Aitken: Sleepwalkers
Broken Screen: Expanding The Image, Breaking The Narrative
Doug Aitken: A-Z Book (Fractals)
Doug Aitken: Rise
Doug Aitken: Notes For New Religion