Doug Aitken, ice forms VII, 2008 (production still from New Ocean: thaw, 2001).
© Doug Aitken. Courtesy of the artist
The Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is pleased to announce the presentation of New Ocean: thaw, an immersive installation by American artist Doug Aitken. This presentation, part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” programme showcasing previously unseen holdings of the Collection at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing and Seoul, carries out the Fondation’s intent to realize international projects and make them accessible to a broader public.
Doug Aitken initially studied magazine illustration; the video production that he developed beginning in the mid-1990s is largely inspired by pop imagery. Human figures, central of many of his short films and installations, contribute to the composition of a flow and of a broad setting. Landscape, another of the artist’s favourite subjects, tends towards a new kind of naturalism. Supported by his mastery of technology, entertainment and communication codes, Aitken’s work seeks to describe an ‘invisible landscape’: one profoundly affected by transits, magnetic variations, information and frequencies.
In New Ocean: thaw (2001), Doug Aitken offers a kaleidoscopic flurry of images on the brink of abstraction: views of Alaska, its sky, and its melting glaciers. The work, which nears romantic sentiment in its relation to the immensity of nature, reflects the 19th-century panorama through its projection format (a double installation of three screens practically forming a half-circle). However, it is at the dawn of the 21th century, marked by ecological catastrophes, that the artist is taking a new look at the poetry of vastness. Both a fixed image (ice) and a moving one (water), the work creates a friction, through the energy of continuous change and entropic transformations of the landscape. The sun is broken down and scattered in a chromatic distortion resulting light flares, while the sounds of the glacier are edited into a mix with electronic sounds.
New Ocean: thaw is distinctly marked by the architecture of screens in our environment and, by editing and sound, the artist goes beyond a simple framework to address underlying perceptive notions. His films bear the traces of experimental 20th-century avant-garde filmmaking and the idea of a broader approach that goes beyond narration and representation. Aitken's images attain a near- physical sensory quality that exceed the boundaries of simple visual perception.
About the Fondation Louis Vuitton
The Fondation Louis Vuitton serves the public interest and is exclusively dedicated to contemporary art and artists, as well as 20th century works to which their inspirations can be traced. The Collection and the exhibitions it organises seek to engage a broad public. The magnificent building created by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and already recognized as an emblematic example of the 21th century architecture, constitutes the Fondation’s seminal artistic statement. Since its opening in October 2014, the Fondation has welcomed more than six million visitors from France and around the world.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton commits to engage in international initiatives, both at the Fondation and in partnership with public and private institutions, including other foundations and museums such as the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Saint-Petersburg (Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection), the MoMA in New York (Being Modern: MoMA in Paris), and the Courtauld Gallery in London (The Courtauld Collection. A Vision for Impressionism) among others. The artistic direction also developed a specific “Hors-les-murs” programme taking place within the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing and Seoul, which are exclusively devoted to exhibitions of works from the Collection. These exhibitions are open to the public free of charge and promoted through specific cultural communication.
