Doug Aitken

b. 1968, Redondo Beach, USA. Lives and works in Los Angeles

The Garden, 2017/2019
Interactive installation, dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist; Gallery 303, New York, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Victoria Miro, London; Regen Projects, Los Angeles

An unexpected oasis occupies an entire gallery of the Museum, coming as a relief within the exhibition: a patch of green in the midst of the concrete grey of the Soviet building around it.  As visitors approach the greenhouse, they stumble upon an illuminated, white, sterile chamber, a quintessential contemporary living space protected from the nature around it. The Garden, a large-scale living installation staged by American artist Doug Aitken, offers a visceral experience of the split between the natural and man-made environments we enact or see enacted in front of us. Visitors are invited to enter the room and for a short period of time they are free to contemplate the nature behind the glass, to sit, to walk, to stand or to destroy it all (furniture is replaced and recycled).

The Garden becomes activated when participants enter the chamber but also when they contemplate it from outside as the subject of the gaze changes: sometimes it is the people inside who are observed, sometimes it is the solitary green patch of plants. In turn, the passive observers turn into main actors when entering the sterile white chamber, their decisions having a direct impact on the environment the next visitor will find themselves in. What remains constant against the backdrop of changing expressions of human nature is the landscape: alive, humid, accommodating, yet infinitely remote behind the thick glass of the room.

Admission to the installation The Garden. 18+ 

Tuesday, Thursday: 17:00–21:30 (break from 19:00 to 19:30)
Sunday: 14:00–18:30 (break from 16:00 to 16:30)

Conditions:

With an exhibition ticket
Queuing may be necessary
A waiver must be signed (your passport or a copy of it is required)