Doug Aitken
Frontier
23rd October – 23rd November 2009
A video-installation on Tiber Island, Rome (I)
Everyday from 6 pm to 11.30 pm
Then at the MACRO – Museo d’Arte
Contemporanea Roma
http://www.enelcontemporanea.it
From Friday 23rd October, the third edition of Enel Contemporanea, curated by Francesco Bonami will be open to the public. The project, promoted by Enel (Italy’s largest electric company and the second largest listed utility in Europe), presents a series of works each year on the subject of energy by artists of international prominence.
The American artist Doug Aitken, winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennial in 1999, will be the featured artist of the third edition of Enel Contemporanea, the public art initiative promoted by Enel and curated by Francesco Bonami, with a major installation in Rome on the tip of the Tiber Island from 23 October to 23 November 2009 ( http://www.enelcontemporanea.it ). Afterwards the installation will be donated by Enel to the MACRO museum of Rome (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), as part of a new partnership between Enel and the museum.
Frontier – the title of Doug Aitken’s project – is an open-air video installation in which the artist uses an amazing crescendo of sounds and images to depict a visionary journey in the modern world, blurring the line between fiction and reality. It is a narrative work that takes place over the course of a day, featuring the famous American painter Ed Ruscha. Its images emanate from a series of multiple screens set within a minimal, white, architectural structure with no roof, punctuated by numerous small windows that emit a glow of energy towards the exterior. A sort of modern “micro-Coliseum” with a powerful emotional and multi-sensory impact, showing a video shot in Rome, Los Angeles, Israel and South Africa – a story of everywhere and, at the same time, of nowhere.
The partnership between Enel and the MACRO (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), a novelty of the third edition of Enel Contemporanea, aims to create beneficial synergies between the public and private spheres in the promotion of contemporary art.
For Enel Contemporanea 2009, Doug Aitken has created a work with a powerful emotional impact at the tip of the Tiber Island, a magical and legendary location in the heart of Rome, the only natural island on the Tiber, on the arm of the river that separates the famous quarter of Trastevere from the area including Piazza Navona and Campo dei Fiori.
Conceived by the artist as an ideal Energy Room, where the world of images explodes before the viewers’ eyes, the installation includes a series of videos and images that completely surround the spectator, from above, inside and outside a dedicated architectural structure that visitors can access freely.
Through the openings that characterize its surface, the architectural structure permits glimpses of fragments of the video showing inside.
The story revolves around the journey of the protagonist, a solitary individual played by the American painter Ed Ruscha, who moves through a deserted landscape. In the opening scene, the protagonist sits in a darkened movie theatre. He then leaves to begin his walkabout through a near-abandoned city, experiencing a series of initially almost insignificant encounters and situations that become gradually more intense, reflecting a profound change that is taking place, a change symbolized by the final scene in which Ruscha finds himself surrounded by a crowd of protestors. Suddenly we are returned to the initial darkness and the solitary protagonist finds himself once again, to his astonishment, inside the cinema where the story began.
It is no accident that Enel Contemporanea commissioned the project for its 2009 edition from Doug Aitken, one of the most innovative contemporary artists of the new millennium in the visual arts, known and respected throughout the world for his narration/installations combining still images, sound and video. With an incisive, future-oriented perspective, Aitken has explored many fields of expression, from video to environmental architecture, using a particularly innovative and far-reaching lexicon that makes him an ideal partner for a company like Enel, with its strong commitment to research and innovation.
Winner of the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Biennale in 1999, Doug Aitken (Redondo Beach, California, USA, 1968) is internationally known for his works in light, sound and images, such as the video entitled Sleepwalkers, which was projected on the entire façade of the MoMA in 2007. Aitken has participated in one-man and group shows held in the foremost art institutions worldwide and his work has been exhibited in the New York MoMA, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Musée D’Art Moderne in Paris, among others.
Doug Aitken lives and works in Los Angeles ( http://www.dougaitkenworkshop.com )
The MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma – is part of an recognized museum circuit, having hosted collectives and solo shows by the major players in international contemporary art. MACRO has two sites, one in Via Reggio Emilia, currently undergoing an expansion (New MACRO) designed by Odile Decq, and one in Testaccio (MACRO Future). Thanks in part to the variety of its spaces, the museum is able to offer a broad cross-section of cultural activities and aims to show the diversity of the contemporary scene. MACRO reopened on 16 May 2009 under the direction of Luca Massimo Barbero ( http://www.macro.roma.museum ).
ENEL is Italy’s largest power company and Europe’s second-largest utility by installed capacity. Enel produces and sells electricity and gas across Europe, North America and Latin America. Following the acquisition of the Spanish utility Endesa, Enel now has a presence in 23 countries with more than 95,000 MW of generating capacity, serving over 60 million electricity and gas customers. Listed on the Milan stock exchange since 1999, Enel has more shareholders than any other Italian company, with some 1.3 million investors.
ENEL CONTEMPORANEA 2009 (THIRD EDITION):
A series of public art projects dedicated to different forms of energy.
Curator: Francesco Bonami.
DOUG AITKEN
Frontier
October 23 – November 23 2009
Rome, Tiber Island (Ponte Fabricio)
Everyday from 6 pm to 11.30 pm
Then at the MACRO, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma
ENEL CONTEMPORANEA PRESS OFFICE
h+
Alessandra de Antonellis Mob. +39 339 3637388 alessandra [at] hfilms.net
Cristiana Rota Mob. +39 347 5258440 cristiana [at] hfilms.net
Enel
Media Relations
Tel. +39 06 83055699 Fax +39 06 83053771 ufficiostampa [at] enel.it
Website: http://www.enelcontemporanea.it
