LOS ANGELES — Strolling into the large Scottish Ceremony Masonic Temple to observe Doug Aitken’s Lightscape is like arriving backstage mid-movie at an old style drive-in. Intensive picket struts buttress the set up’s seven large-scale screens — every greater than 20 by 15 ft (six by 4 and a half meters) — that enclose viewers in a panoramic discipline of ceaselessly shifting photos and a soundtrack that features actors’ spoken ruminations; location sounds comparable to automotive tires, garden sprinklers, prepare horns, and boots on asphalt; and snatches of minimalist musical compositions.
Constructed within the mid-Twentieth century to deal with the arcane rituals of the Masonic Order fraternity, the Temple is situated close to the Hollywood manufacturing enterprises which have lengthy made LA the epicenter of make-believe. This overlap of objective between the economic Dream Manufacturing unit and the lapsed Masonic venture, which created ceremonial areas and corralled invented imagery to remodel the cultish into the cultural, makes the Temple an apt context for Lightscape’s quasi-mystical spectacle.
Aitken is a virtuoso at framing human actions by way of constructed landscapes out on the planet, going again to his 1999 set up Electrical Earth, which gained a prize at that yr’s Venice Biennale. Lightscape masterfully shifts by way of such scenes in simultaneous pairings, triplets, and bigger ensembles. Easy but emotionally charged and dynamic tableaus of a raking gardener, lone drivers on journeys to nowhere, and dancing warehouse staff construct in cycles to varied peaks with out overarching narrative. The final word type for the piece, then, presents as a centripetal loop, a montage of vignettes with the texture of old-school music movies or adverts for designer denims.
Set up view of Lightscape at Marciano Artwork Basis (photograph by Brica Wilcox)
Lightscape’s message appears to be that we aren’t simply impelled to observe however ought to have fun actions prescribed by fashionable infrastructure of highways and retail shops, vehicles, and factories. And nevertheless beset we’re by the pressures of capitalism and modernity, going with the move can yield sure pleasures — as an example, that of being a shifting physique, even when one responding to machineries’ mandates. In Lightscape, peaks of those human behaviors play out as a forged of assembly-line staff, subway passengers, and pedestrian rave-seekers burst into ecstatic dancing.
Nearly all of depicted scenes are sited on vehicles, metropolis streets, and overhead highways, with prolonged sequences displaying extremely polished fashionable properties, yard swimming swimming pools, and luxurious gardens. Although proposing a form of common connectedness of all issues, Lightscape’s settings stay circumscribed to very Southern Californian milieus. Solar-drenched deserts, seashores, suburban residences, and landscaped backyards alternate with networks of roadways, gritty city facades, and subway and warehouse interiors. The soundtrack straddles the ominous (deep wind noises, pulsing rhythms) and the transcendent (angelic voices), with music excerpted from Philip Glass and Steve Reich compositions. Semi-melodic voiceovers repeat banal mantras; one hooded, strolling girl muses, “Every day, the seasons change.”
It’s the looks of animals sporadically by way of Lightscape that leaves unsure the query of machinations in our shared world. Non-human creatures make cameos all through the piece, reminding us that they, too, are looking for some place or traction within the constructed world. A tentative coyote briefly wanders a metropolis sidewalk, a giant cat prowls inside a moderne residence in a number of longer appearances, and a recurrent horse carries a cowboy by way of assorted landscapes. These city adaptors don’t have a look at ease on the planet. They’re mascots, victims of the human impulse that marginalizes nature to the sides of pavement and infrastructure. Like Lightscape’s actors and immersed viewers, they’re careening by way of the detritus of constructed environments, succumbing to the rhythms of commerce and its mechanisms, awash of their stimulations.
Set up view of Lightscape at Marciano Artwork Basis (photograph by Michael Anthony Hernandez)
Lightscape: Doug Aitken continues on the Marciano Artwork Basis (4357 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles) by way of March 15. The exhibition was organized by the artist.
