The Doug Aitken project at MoMA, January 16-February 12, 2007. A Joint Project of Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art. Rendering, View from 54th Street. © 2006 Doug Aitken
The Museum of Modern Art and Creative Time, the New York–based public art organization, have jointly commissioned Doug Aitken to create the artist’s first large-scale public artwork in the United States, which will be the first to bring art to MoMA’s exterior walls. Continuous sequences of film scenes will be projected onto seven façades, including those on West 53rd and 54th streets, and those overlooking the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden.
Inspired by the densely built environment of New York’s midtown, the artist will create a cinematic art experience that will directly integrate with the architectural fabric of the city while simultaneously enhancing and challenging viewers’ perceptions of public space. The project, filmed in New York City, will be shown daily from January 16 to February 12, 2007, from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m., and will be visible from many public vantage points adjacent to the Museum. It is a joint project of Creative Time and The Museum of Modern Art.
The Doug Aitken project at MoMA
The projection of the Aitken film will provide an artistic alternative to the rapid proliferation of commercial media in the urban landscape. Aitken will reveal the diverse energies and rhythms of New York and will look at the pedestrian experience as one of the many pattern- and rhythmbased relationships seen in the city. Noting that “the city is about communication,” Aitken responds by transforming the hard-edged concrete and glass language of midtown architecture into a fluid mesh of interacting personal landscapes
This project continues Aitken’s (American, b. 1968) body of work that explores the evolving ways people experience memory and narrative and relate to fast-paced urban environments. During the past decade, the artist has created innovative contemporary video art by fracturing the narrative structures of his films across multiscreen environments. His work has been exhibited in museums around the world, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. In 1999, he was awarded the International Prize at the Venice Biennale. In 2004, Aitken’s installation Interiors (2002) was shown as part of the exhibition Hard Light at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate. The Doug Aitken project at MoMA is produced and filmed in New York with local cast and crew. The projections will be overseen by Scharff Weisberg, Inc. using Chrystie Digital Systems, Inc
