February 20, 2025
Doug Aitken
Psychic Debris Field
Regen Projects
January 18 - February 22, 2025
Doug Aitken
P-22 was the celebrated mountain lion who roamed the Los Angeles environs. He was featured in numerous articles beginning in 2012 until he was euthanized because of wounds and disease in 2022. The first work viewers encounter in Doug Aitken's exhibition Psychic Debris Field is the larger than life sized sculpture Spirit Animal (P-22) (2025), an homage to the deceased cat made from more than forty embedded aggregates ranging from kitty litter to all sorts of beans and seeds encapsulated in resin. This powerful beast has become, in essence, a metaphor for the landscape he inhabited.
Numerous other animals are featured in the exhibition — including stags and buffalos — impeccably crafted from man-made (reclaimed computer packing foam) as well as natural materials. Three incarnations of this bright white animal dominate one gallery: two are standing and one is seated in a resting position. Green vines dangle off the backs of two of them suggesting life and regrowth in the face of death. For [TBT - Stags] (2025) Aitken replicates two stags butting heads, their interlocking antlers illuminated by LEDs that change color in the darkened back gallery.
As usual, Aitken has fashioned a stunning, visually compelling installation that juxtaposes audio visual, sculpted and printed elements. Aitken's installations as well as individual works have a formal beauty. He intuitively weaves together a range of materials to maximize what they have to offer, be it a repurposed ice chest or a light box tondo of an abandoned car.
As an installation, Psychic Debris Field divides the galleries into two discrete environments. In the front room, Aitken presents the sculpted buffalos alongside a suite of large-scale, digitally printed wall works featuring the side of a modernist house with glass windows, the outline of a 1950s era swimming pool, and a desert landscape horizon line (both with and without horses), or an expanse of blue sky. These similar compositions contain different iterations of the same elements to become a quasi-timeline through California's history and landscape.
In the back room Aitken has constructed an immersive environment with sounds and changing lights. While the centerpiece is the life-sized sculpture of the two stags, other elements include a city bus shelter, an ice machine filled with live cacti and steel replicas of cacti set into the center of car tires filled with resin. Translucent resin pigeons rest on some of these plants, glowing different colors as LED lights within them ebb and flow. As the room shifts from deep reds to blue and purple, viewers become more tuned in to a sound collage that repeats fragments of the phrase "when I move I see things more clearly."
Throughout his remarkably eclectic career, Aitken has depicted the natural and urban landscapes as anchors for objects as well as actors. The exhibition at Regen coincides with Lightscape (2024), a multi-screen installation that debuted at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and is on view at the Marciano Art Foundation through March 15, 2025. The two installations highlight Aitken's unique explorations of light, landscape, sound, and the ever-changing environment that surrounds us.
Psychic Debris Field
Regen Projects
January 18 - February 22, 2025
Doug Aitken
P-22 was the celebrated mountain lion who roamed the Los Angeles environs. He was featured in numerous articles beginning in 2012 until he was euthanized because of wounds and disease in 2022. The first work viewers encounter in Doug Aitken's exhibition Psychic Debris Field is the larger than life sized sculpture Spirit Animal (P-22) (2025), an homage to the deceased cat made from more than forty embedded aggregates ranging from kitty litter to all sorts of beans and seeds encapsulated in resin. This powerful beast has become, in essence, a metaphor for the landscape he inhabited.
Numerous other animals are featured in the exhibition — including stags and buffalos — impeccably crafted from man-made (reclaimed computer packing foam) as well as natural materials. Three incarnations of this bright white animal dominate one gallery: two are standing and one is seated in a resting position. Green vines dangle off the backs of two of them suggesting life and regrowth in the face of death. For [TBT - Stags] (2025) Aitken replicates two stags butting heads, their interlocking antlers illuminated by LEDs that change color in the darkened back gallery.
As usual, Aitken has fashioned a stunning, visually compelling installation that juxtaposes audio visual, sculpted and printed elements. Aitken's installations as well as individual works have a formal beauty. He intuitively weaves together a range of materials to maximize what they have to offer, be it a repurposed ice chest or a light box tondo of an abandoned car.
As an installation, Psychic Debris Field divides the galleries into two discrete environments. In the front room, Aitken presents the sculpted buffalos alongside a suite of large-scale, digitally printed wall works featuring the side of a modernist house with glass windows, the outline of a 1950s era swimming pool, and a desert landscape horizon line (both with and without horses), or an expanse of blue sky. These similar compositions contain different iterations of the same elements to become a quasi-timeline through California's history and landscape.
In the back room Aitken has constructed an immersive environment with sounds and changing lights. While the centerpiece is the life-sized sculpture of the two stags, other elements include a city bus shelter, an ice machine filled with live cacti and steel replicas of cacti set into the center of car tires filled with resin. Translucent resin pigeons rest on some of these plants, glowing different colors as LED lights within them ebb and flow. As the room shifts from deep reds to blue and purple, viewers become more tuned in to a sound collage that repeats fragments of the phrase "when I move I see things more clearly."
Throughout his remarkably eclectic career, Aitken has depicted the natural and urban landscapes as anchors for objects as well as actors. The exhibition at Regen coincides with Lightscape (2024), a multi-screen installation that debuted at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and is on view at the Marciano Art Foundation through March 15, 2025. The two installations highlight Aitken's unique explorations of light, landscape, sound, and the ever-changing environment that surrounds us.