Doug Aitken. Psychic Debris Field

About

In Psychic Debris Field, Aitken sets forth a poly-media composition of artworks that create a narrative which explores the juxtaposition of deep ecological history within our landscape and contemporary habitation. The artworks create a fever-dream interpretation of our landscape ranging from large-scale sculptures created from urban debris, light and sound installations, botanic artworks, and fabric works that seamlessly combine these mediums.

At the show’s entrance, viewers are greeted by P-22 (2024), a larger-than-life sculptural form of the famed wild western mountain lion which resided majestically in the Hollywood Hills for many years. The sculpture is made entirely out of foraged materials found within the urban landscape. These include microplastics washed up on the Pacific Coast, discarded freeway rubber repurposing used tires, composted seeds, and organic matter. Over eighty materials are compressed into strata to form the likeness of the mountain lion and condense it into a contemporary vessel comprised of the landscape around us.

The first room of the exhibition is anchored by three large sculptures of North American bison made from reclaimed computerpacking foam. The stoic animals frozen as sculptures in their chalky white material command a presence empty of color and alluding to a phantom landscape, a Fata Morgana of an ecosystem that was. Yet somehow two of these artworks are in a state of continuous transformation, filled with fertile earth and vegetation, with plants and vines cascading from them and continuing the cycle of regrowth. In the third bison, cutaways reveal an interior of Styrofoam carved into machine-like shapes, suggesting microchips or an electronic infrastructure. Surrounding these are tapestries created during the making of Lightscape, Aitken’s multimedia project including music, film, and installation components realized in collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. These hand-sewn and digitally printed wall works informed and acted as storyboards throughout the process. Each has the same repeating composition of a house, pool, and horizon. Together they construct a timeline of our continuously altered landscape from pre-human to ideas of post-human occupation.