Doug Aitken
Electric Earth
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas [link]
Gloriously composed, the polished production of Aitken’s work is problematic. The mundane becomes transcendent, a sublimation of the common provoking a desire to romanticize the surreal playgrounds of parking lots, diners, deserts and seedy hotels. These overlooked, neglected fringes are made nostalgically beguiling. Simple, iconic phrases become alluring sculptures. Within this superficial world exists a provocation: a disproportionate ratio of seduction to content, granting the work optional profundity.
One may accept the dirt-glam fairytales of negligible morality as enchanting consumables, or optionally as subversive commentary on our pitiable desires fulfilled: another cultural megatexture mined for nostalgia and polished free of reality.
~ Ryder Richards
images courtesy of the author
