Doug Aitken returns to London to present ‘Return to the Real’, an exhibition at Victoria Miro’s Wharf Road gallery that addresses our fascination with social media. Pictured, Inside Out, 2019, by Doug Aitken.
The very American art of Doug Aitken is, most of it anyway, at once transcendent and dangerously of the now. He is in that sense a pop artist proper. He is also able and agile in many medium and an assembler of performances (he has fantastic taste in musical collaborators) and creative happenings. His art can be big, clever, embracing of technology, accessible, often happens outdoors or on giant or multiple screens and sometimes – as with Station to Station (2013-2015) and New Horizons (2019) – moves on tracks or through the air.
Sometimes though it is quiet and small, willing to be contained in a gallery space. His new show at London’s Victoria Miro gallery, Wharf Road branch, is that but as powerfully affecting as anything he has done. ‘Return to the Real’ is Aitken’s device to make us think about our devices, the experiential subletting to Instagram, the squeal and squawk of social media. ‘It’s a counterpoint to that world of de-materiality and speed,’ he says, ‘and about seeking something which is unique or being in a place which is physical and tactile or a moment which is unrepeatable.’
Top, Futures Past (aerial pools), 2019. Bottom, Shock and Awe (two chairs and pool), 2019, both by Doug Aitken.
Head upstairs first where three ‘sonic sculptures’, circular shiny steel wind chimes, slowly rotate in front of a large screen which flickers and changes colour. It is mesmerisingly, meditatively effective as the light plays off slowly spinning steel columns. At the same time there is music and massed human voices, singing single words and short phrases – small chunks of a piece for 100 vocalists that Aitken has been working on for a year and half. And to one side is a female form, attempting contemplation. She is carved from (carefully chosen) layered carrara marble, heavy, Aitken, says, with ‘deep geological time’. But she is also bisected to reveal a perfectly polished mirrored interior. A soul, pure and unsmudged? It too picks up the light and flickers gently. She is our hero, a minor god magicking up this small restorative universe.
The piece was a long time in the installation and only toward the end, Aitken says, did he notice that it was rooted somehow in the American minimalism of John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Steve Reich and Terry Riley and in the shamanistic art of Joseph Beuys and James Lee Byars. But if Reich and Riley were re-working the rhythms and clatter of the industrial age, this is post-industrial music; not the scattering circuit-board twitches of a solo Thom Yorke say but modern mantras, essential cycles, something to drown out the terrible noise of it all.
All doors open, 2019, by Doug Aitken.
Downstairs things are almost domestic. A translucent acrylic young woman is slumped/resting at a table, a smart phone just out of reach. She is alive with colour but dead to the world, surrounded by light boxes, illuminated dreamscapes of delicious looking beds, swimming pools, aeroplanes, aspirational distractions, screens of plenty. Perhaps she is on her way upstairs to become our lady of the windchimes. Let’s hope so.
INFORMATION
‘Return to the Real’, 2 October – 20 December, Victoria Miro. victoria-miro.com
ADDRESS
Victoria Miro
16 Wharf Road
London N1 7RW
-
Rio Kobayashi’s new furniture bridges eras, shown alongside Fritz Rauh’s midcentury paintings at Blunk SpaceFurniture designer Rio Kobayashi unveils a new series, informed by the paintings of midcentury artist Fritz Rauh, at California’s Blunk Space
-
New York restaurant Locanda Verde’s second outpost will transport you to a different time and placeLocanda Verde’s expansive new Hudson Yards osteria exudes a sophisticated yet intimate atmosphere overflowing with art treasures
-
LVMH watch week 2025: everything we know so farOur guide to LVMH Watch Week 2025, taking place in New York and Paris, starting 21 January; keep an eye out for our updates
-
'It's a metaphor for life': rising star and 'Queer' poster artist Jake Grewal on his new London exhibitionBritish artist Jake Grewal speaks to Simon Chilvers about 'Under the Same Sky' as it opens at Studio Voltaire in London
-
Inside the distorted world of artist George RouyFrequently drawing comparisons with Francis Bacon, painter George Rouy is gaining peer points for his use of classic techniques to distort the human form
-
‘I'm endlessly fascinated by the nude’: Somaya Critchlow’s intimate and confident drawings are on show in London‘Triple Threat’ at Maximillian William gallery in London is British artist Somaya Critchlow’s first show dedicated solely to drawing
-
Surrealism as feminist resistance: artists against fascism in Leeds‘The Traumatic Surreal’ at the Henry Moore Institute, unpacks the generational trauma left by Nazism for postwar women
-
Love, melancholy and domesticity: Anna Calleja is a painter to watchAnna Calleja explores everyday themes in her exhibition, ‘One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night’, at Sim Smith, London
-
Ndayé Kouagou speaks the language of the chaotic social media influencer in LondonNdayé Kouagou celebrates meandering incoherence with an exhibition, ‘A Message for Everybody’, at Gathering in London
-
Discover psychedelic landscapes and mind-bending art at London’s Tate Modern'Electric Dreams' at the Tate encompasses the period from the 1950s to the beginning of the internet era
-
Meet Kenia Almaraz Murillo, the artist rethinking weavingKenia Almaraz Murillo draws on the new and the traditional in her exhibition 'Andean Cosmovision' at London's Waddington Custot
