Bring a lot of time with you, because it’s easy to get lost in Doug Aitken’s “Electric Earth”(1999). This immersive work makes you feel like you are accompanying the last person on earth strolling through an abandoned city in a desperate search for another soul. It poignantly builds on various themes — dichotomy, simultaneity, non-linear narrative, expansion, transformation, multiplicity and the dissipation of time and place. This mid-career retrospective of the Los Angeles-based artist is curated by MOCA Director Philippe Vergne and Anna Katz. It includes sculptures, photographs, collages, seven large-scale video installations and a new live sound piece titled “Sonic Fountain” (2013) for which Aitken dug a hole into the floor of the north-east gallery space, filled it up with cloudy water and encircled it with piles of rubble and dirt. To complete the sensation of a cave, water drops fall rhythmically from a pipe above to the artificial pool below.
Similar to Aitken’s “Sonic Pavilion” (a permanent 2009 installation in Brazil), “Sonic Fountain” amplifies those natural sounds over speakers. The exhibit is also highlighted by “Black Mirror” (2011), a multi-channel video installation and performance within a black-mirrored kaleidoscope with actress and fashion impresario Chloë Savigny, who plays a woman drifting from place to place, only in the company of her loneliness. Be sure to also spend time with “Song 1” (2012), “Diamond Sea” (1997) and “Migration” (2008)
