Doug Aitken’s new work in concurrent exhibitions at 303 Gallery’s 22nd and 21st spaces opened September 20 in NYC with an ancillary, yet not readily discernable disjunctive presence to the work’s sadly conspicuous aims, a rather pedagogical term for an artistic rendering, but so warranted in the 21st space’s inaugural exhibition, Migration, part of a 3-part cycle of installations titled, Empire.

That side-show alluded to above addresses intent’s unleashed movement when hospitality services overwhelm talent, not quite the scenario Doug Aitken believed proffered in his 24 plus minute film on three rather sturdy billboards. However, gradations of motel performance are addressed in his film and it acknowledges that hotel advertised self-congratulatory accommodation feats are wide-spread, but the best of any lodging would be compromised by an adolescent thematic and Aiken does provide such.

A romanticized perspective resting on a smudged storyline hinders the film’s singular beauty resulting in disjoined compositions: a moose (assuming I got the animal right, but it was big, too big) in an immaculate motel room; the blatantly unlocked room with its open door policy for the local wilderness inhabitant, rabbits, for instance, or one initially, and then many on two beds: we get it, they procreate. A ventured deer’s presence and subsequent warning upon looking up at mounted antlers that migratory yearning can only go so far.

The rooms are vacant and the land and interiors are uninhabited, but so what. The animals run their course. A fox disregards jig-saw puzzle pieces as such on a bed: symbols run their fragmented tracks. Animals knock phones over, a phone’s red light blinks and alienation wants call waiting. Lamps are overturned, shades find new untenable positions and bulbs glow while the animal in question does its deal whether it be the raccoon in tub or owl traversing across bedspread, releasing an eventual pillow feather snowstorm.

The wilderness intruders have accompanying mysterious music, and the degrees of respective animal’s innate aggressiveness correlates with the music’s vehemence. Not unexpectedly. However, this banal series of transgressed spaces provides its own extraordinary reprieve, a dislocation from its thematic continuum: for instance, that toppled lamp, the shade, the bulb within and then a magnificent “still” of a lit bulb. The film has countless such examples and, therefore, argues against itself: Aiken promotes what the film does not provide, exceptional images, nuanced production stills that have migrated from contextual obstructions, a dressed up beauty.

~Alan Nadler