Jan 03, 2017 Doug Aitken’s Electric Earth is gone in two weeks
One of the best things about having a houseguest is being motivated to check out stuff in your hometown that you might have been too busy to appreciate. At MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo, we finally visited Doug Aitken’s Electric Earth.
The comprehensive, midcareer retrospective is as architectural as it is electric, with roomfuls of video and still images shown in different contexts: monitors of all shapes and sizes, digital billboards, unique frames. The medium seems to take precedent over the message, and every segment is immersive and epic.
Other artists have turned words into art and placed animals in human environments, but Aitken takes those ideas and lights them up brilliantly with fantastic production value. Sonic Fountain II is a bigger hole than other artists’ holes and made me feel like I was in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
There are many cool moments–especially for Los Angelenos like me. I loved spotting X’s John Doe as much as most others in the exhibit enjoyed seeing Hollywood’s Tilda Swinton and Chloë Sevigny The access that Aitken demonstrates is really incredible.
Then again, I also got a huge kick out of seeing a monkey reflected on countless surfaces in Black Mirror. If this sort of disorienting imagery in a labyrinth of a layout sounds like something you’d like to get lost in–and the pieces are not the same in a catalogue or on YouTube–you have until January 15 to experience it.
Find out more about Electric Earth at moca.org, and follow Imprint on this page as well as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, too!