For Immediate Release

Contact: Cara Egan, SAM Public Relations
(206) 748-9285; email: PR@SeattleArtMuseum.org

SEATTLE ART MUSEUM ANNOUNCES MAJOR ART COMMISSION

Internationally renowned artist Doug Aitken to create “Mirror”, a site-specific work that will be integrated into the façade of SAM’s downtown building

SEATTLE, April 4, 2012 – Today, the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) announced the commission of a monumental new artwork by Doug Aitken to be sited permanently on the northwestern façade of the museum’s downtown location. The work, entitled Mirror, was commissioned for SAM’s collection by Bagley Wright before his death last year. Mr. Wright was one of Seattle’s visionary leaders who, along with his wife, Virginia, was a legendary arts patron and a celebrated collector of modern and contemporary art. Mirror is currently in development and is expected to be installed in the early part of 2013.

Mr. Wright was a great admirer of Aitken’s work and collaborated closely with the artist and SAM on this commission before he passed away. “Bagley and Jinny have always collected art way ahead of their time and this piece is emblematic of their courage and foresight as collectors,” said Maryann Jordan, Vice Director of SAM. “We had always envisioned a work of art on the façade of the new building but Bagley’s determination to support the creation of something truly transformative was catalytic. Mirror will no doubt become an icon for the heart of Downtown.”

Aitken, who is based in Los Angeles and New York, has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world including institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Aitken’s Sleepwalkers exhibition at MoMA in 2007 transformed an entire block of Manhattan into an expansive cinematic experience as he covered the museum’s exteriors walls with projections. Most recently, he unveiled SONG 1, a work that illuminates the entire façade of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum’s iconic cylindrical building, transforming it with seamlessly projected moving images and an urban soundscape. Urban topographies and the rhythms and movements of large cities have inspired Aitken throughout his career. Mirror at SAM will be his first permanent installation for a public museum.

Mirror will consist of a monumental LED display that wraps around the northwest corner of SAM’s building. The main component is a glass-covered horizontal band of projected images which dissolve into narrow columns of light that run up and down the façade in a dynamic configuration. The work is conceived as a “mirror” in an expanded sense: the artist will create a video archive of footage shot in the Pacific Northwest that reflects the Seattle region and is responsive to its surroundings.

In a second step, Aitken will choreograph ever-changing visual sequences, which will be dictated by a computer program that then generates new combinations based on his choreographic instructions. The program is designed to be responsive to changes in the environment around SAM such as weather, light, special events and traffic, giving the impression that the entire building is alive with motion—another example of reflection that literally implicates SAM into the city and the rhythms of the city into SAM.

“Doug Aitken is concerned with a cinematic vision of the urban environment and its inhabitants,” said Catharina Manchanda, SAM’s Jon and Mary Shirley Curator for Modern and Contemporary Art. “His project for SAM will transform the façade into a fluid mirror that reflects the changing rhythms of the city. It will be an outstanding artwork by a visionary artist and it is a work that can be enjoyed by everyone walking the urban corridors surrounding SAM.”

Mirror Project Team

Artist Bio

His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Since the mid-1990s, Aitken has created installations by employing multiple screens. Diamond Sea was presented at the 1997 Whitney Biennial and his Electric Earth installation drew international attention and earned him the International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999.

The following year, Glass Horizon, an installation comprising a projection of a pair of eyes onto the façade of the Vienna Secession building after it had closed for the night, showcased an interest in architectural structures and in art that interacts with urban environments. In 2001, Aitken’s exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery used the entire building for the complex installation New Ocean.

In 2006, Aitken produced Broken Screen: 26 Conversations with Doug Aitken (DAP, 2006), a book of interviews with twenty-six artists who aim to explore and challenge the conventions of linear narrative. Interviews included Robert Altman, Claire Denis, Werner Herzog, Rem Koolhaas, Kenneth Anger and others.

In the winter of 2007, Aitken’s Sleepwalkers was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The project includes the actors Donald Sutherland and Tilda Swinton, musicians Seu Jorge and Cat Power. Five interlocking vignettes shown through eight projections were displayed upon the exterior walls of the museum so as to be visible from the street.

In 2008, Aitken produced another large scale outdoor film installation, titled Migration for the 55th Carnegie International show titled Life on Mars in Pittsburgh, PA. The work features wild animals of North America, curiously inhabiting, empty and desolate hotel rooms filmed across America. He also produced a collection of photographs, 99 Cent Dreams, which captures “moments between interaction” to create a 21st century nomadic travelogue.

In October 2009, Aitken’s Sonic Pavilion opened to the public. The pavilion is located in the forested hills of Brazil, at INHOTIM a new cultural foundation. The Sonic Pavilion provides a communal space to listen to the sounds of the earth as they are recorded through highly sensitive microphones buried close to a mile deep into the ground and carried back into the pavilion through a number of speakers. The sound heard inside the pavilion is the amplified sound of the moving interior of the earth.

Continuing his work in innovative outdoor projects, Aitken presented his latest large-scale film and architecture installation, Frontier, on the Tiber river’s Isola Tiberina in the heart of Rome in November of 2009. His immersive installation and performance titled Black Mirror was presented in Athens and Hydra, Greece in 2011.

In March 2012, he unveiled SONG 1 for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Aitken illuminated the entire façade of the Hirshhorn’s iconic building, transforming it with seamlessly projected moving images and an urban soundscape. Using eleven high-definition video projectors, Aitken seamlessly blended imagery to envelop the museum's exterior, creating a work that redefines cinematic space.