Dates: Oct 9 – Nov 13, 2004

“…Our lives today are in perpetual motion. Our bodies float in a landscape of electricity and movement. Our vision of the world is static, a series of frozen moments. The three works in this show are an attempt to bring our vision at speed with the world around us.”
Doug Aitken, 2004

Taka Ishii Gallery is pleased to announce This Moment is the Moment, Los Angeles based artist Doug Aitken’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Aitken’s work has been featured in numerous solo museum exhibitions including CaixaForum, Barcelona (2004), Kunsthalle Zurich, Zurich (2003), Tokyo Opera City Gallery, Tokyo (2002), Serpentine Gallery, London (2001), and the Vienna Secession, Vienna (2000). Coinciding with the Taka Ishii Gallery exhibition, the artist’s film, Electric Earth, awarded the International prize at the Venice Biennale (1999), will be presented in October as part of the inaugural exhibition of the Kanazawa Museum of 21st Century Art, Kanazawa. A permanent installation created by the artist will open at Dior Homme, Ginza, Tokyo, on October 24.

This Moment is the Moment is comprised of three discrete, interrelated works – two photographs and a wall-mounted sculptural piece.

“This Moment is the Moment”, the exhibition’s sole sculpture is a wall-mounted variation on an installation which the artist debuted in October at Dior Homme. The work consists of a series of various sized modular pieces of mirror laid out in graphic pattern. The mirrors each move independently creating a constantly shifting, fractureded series of reflections. Unlike the Dior installation, the piece exhibited at Taka Ishii Galery is a discrete, framed work which functions in space allowing the viewer to situate themselves in relation to other exhibited works and the exhibition space itself.

With the photographic work “nighttrain” Aitken further explores the abstract potential of landscape “portraiture”. The pictured city, viewed from above, dematerializes into a series of pulsating lights and energy. The exhibited photograph “maps and cycles (las vegas greyhound station)” presents a highly controlled, detonated moment. The static photographic image is used to portray multiple perspectives inherent in a seemingly still moment – the act of waiting.

The exhibited works function as a triptych － the installation intended to prompt gallery visitors to re-orient themselves and consider alternatives to a linear perception of time.

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