Post by Alfred Kren

Max Lakin with an evocative review of Doug Aitken’s ode to L.A. “… The action, or lack thereof, is set to a floaty score of minimalist music by Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Meredith Monk performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic led by Gustavo Dudamel, punctuated by metrical chants written by Aitken and delivered by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The result is a restless, emotive, loosely laid but thoroughly Los Angeles-minded mosaic — freeways, traffic jams and parking garages figure heavily (one of the chants is the word “freeway” stretched into a droning thrum). And there’s a sequence of quick cuts that abstracts the come-ons and enticements of strip-mall signage (“karma cleaning”) reminiscent of Ed Ruscha’s word paintings — undergirded by a mythopoetic treatment of the American West. “Lightscape” arrives at the Shed two years after its debut at Disney Hall in Los Angeles and subsequent exhibition at the Marciano Art Foundation. It is devotional to Los Angeles’s sprawl and Southern California’s hallucinatory splendor to a near sacramental degree, and for New Yorkers unaccustomed to the particular weirdness of Los Angeles, it can feel like scenes from an alien planet. The Shed bills “Lightscape” as an “immersive installation,” which, happily, it isn’t, or at least not in the overstimulating, exploded kaleidoscope way that such language has come to threaten. It is presented here on seven large screens, most of which alternate between one or two images, or blink off for extended stretches, with a selection of uncomfortable seating from which to view them. You could elect to simply watch a single screen and not miss much. …” https://lnkd.in/em8GYTQS