Space, urban forms and rugged materials converge in Jen Aitken’s architectonic sculptures, on show in Toronto at the Powerplant Contemporary Art Gallery this summer.
The Same Thing Looks Different is Aitken’s first major institutional show and brings together her brutalist cast-concrete sculptures from 2016 alongside new commissions, including her first video work, ‘Lexicon!’, which examines geometric forms from various angles.
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Photograph: Henry Chan courtesy The Power Plant
Aitken invites abstract contemplation via the materiality of her sculptures, which borrow architectonic forms from the urban context. Stacked or cantilevering geometric shapes feel both familiar and fantastical, dynamically changing when viewed from different angles but with a solid, constant steadiness that anchors them within the white-cube gallery space.
The show was four years in the making and debuts three new fibreglass pieces called ‘Altered Cylinders’. Like their concrete siblings, these new works take a regular form and abstract it in unexpected and ambiguous ways, interacting with the architectural fibre of the gallery, which was converted from a powerhouse and ice house for the Toronto Terminal Warehouse (now Queen’s Quay Terminal) in 1987 by Lett/Smith Architects.
Two site-specific works conceived for the show explore drawing and space, using wood to manipulate the perception of volume and negative space.
‘Jen Aitken: The Same Thing Looks Different’ runs until 4 September 2023 at 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Ontario M5J 2G8 Canada
