Doug Aitken, Black Mirror, 2011, still from the 13-minute-20-second three-channel color video component
of a mixed-media installation additionally comprising mirrors.
“A lot of times I dance so fast that I become what’s around me,” says the protagonist of Doug Aitken’s mesmeric, immersive multichannel video installation Electric Earth, 1999, which lends its name to the artist’s first large-scale survey, appropriately debuting in his hometown. The exhibition and catalogue highlight Aitken’s wide-ranging oeuvre, including such atmospheric pieces as diamond sea, 1997, his first foray into multichannel productions, as well as slickly fabricated sculptures, photographs, collages, and documentation of architectural projects. The show will also feature live works, among them the sound installation Sonic Fountain II, 2013/2015, and a host of public programs (modeled on Aitken’s previous “happenings,” as he calls them) for which he will collaborate with writers, actors, and other artists. Aitken’s starstruck and sun-stroked romanticism is not without poetry but rarely casts a shadow. Travels to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, May 27–Sept. 24, 2017.
