DOUG AITKEN, Diamond Sea (1997)
installation view at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, July 2015
image © we find wildness

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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DOUG AITKEN, Diamond Sea (1997)
installation view at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, July 2015
image © we find wildness

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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Diamond Sea, exhibition view at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt

Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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DOUG AITKEN, Diamond Sea (1997)
installation view at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, July 2015
image © we find wildness

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

photograph of people in the exhibition Concentrations 33: Doug Aitken, Diamond Sea, May 21-August 8, 1999, held at the Dallas Museum of Art

Diamond Sea, exhibition views at Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt from the we find wildness instagram

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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Concentrations 33: Doug Aitken, Diamond Sea, May 21-August 8, 1999, held at the Dallas Museum of Art

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Diamond Sea, 1997
production still

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A few days ago the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt opened their new exhibition dedicated to the work of DOUG AITKEN. The exhibition which is not considered as a retrospective but rather as a ‘most comprehensive solo presentation of AITKEN‘s work’ according to the press release, features major pieces by the American artist such as SONG 1 (2012/2015),  Black Mirror (2011) and migration (empire) (2008) among others.

Diamond Sea (1997) is the older piece presented in the show and probably one of the most engaged. The installation consists of two video projections, one suspended video monitor, and one full-color, illuminated duratrans image as well as four speakers that create a surround sound experience. Each projection shows a video that AITKEN filmed in a guarded region in the Namib desert in southwestern Africa at different sequences.

The territory that the artist documented is known as Diamond Area 1 and 2: a highly secure 70,000 square kilometers area that contains the world’s richest diamond mine and that has been sealed off from public access since 1907.

Like most of DOUG AITKEN‘s work, the imagery as well as the soundscape that includes the ambient sounds taped during the video’s production but also musical compositions from Aphex Twins, Gastr Del Sol, Nine Inch Nails and uzig, is truly fascinating and highly seductive. Nevertheless the work reveals intensely the alienated environment by showing and intermingling images of security devices, patrolling helicopters, sand dunes, computer-controlled mining machines, abandoned corporate dormitories, shifting sand and wild black horses moving freely through this hermetically sealed landscape.

This work which is now almost 20 years old, not only witnesses in a appealing aesthetic level, this alien territory but still takes the viewers in a simple and timeless way into questions that involves human civilization, the man’s relationship with nature and technology among others.

DOUG AITKEN‘s solo exhibition is on view at Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt until September 27, 2015. Please note also that Station to Station (2013), a movie that documents a 4,000 mile train journey from New York to San Francisco is on view at the Rossmarkt Cinema , additionally variations of his work migration (empire) (2008) can be viewed at Frankfurt Airport, in hotels and across large City-Light-Boards at various locations around the city.

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