Jen Aitken, Breather 7, 2023
Jen Aitken makes sculptures and drawings that strike a fine balance between perceptual ambiguity and structural clarity. Rendered in a range of crisp, industrial materials like concrete, ceramic, metal, or wood, Aitken's sculptural forms both tempt and resist recognition.
Aitken deliberately draws attention to the spaces she leaves hollow in her works, allowing them to become charged spaces that force viewers to become aware of the area between themselves and the work, or the work and the architectural environment it inhabits. Speaking of her sculptural work, Aitken says that she attempts to make "emptiness feel full."
In addition to her rigourous approach to scultpure, Aitken is attracted to the immediacy of drawing. Her two-dimensional works echo similar architectural forms and can be viewed as impossible or incomplete sculptures.
Jen Aitken (b. 1985, Edmonton, AB, Canada) is a Toronto based sculptor. She received her MFA in 2014 from the University of Guelph, ON, and her BFA in 2010 from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC. Her work has been exhibited at YYZ Artists' Outlet in Toronto and Kamloops Art Gallery and Richmond Art Gallery in British Columbia. Recent group shows include Paper Routes-Women to Watch 2020 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC and Des horizons d'attente at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montréal, QC. Aitken's first solo institutional exhibition, The Same Thing Looks Different, was on view at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto from June to September 2023.
Aitken deliberately draws attention to the spaces she leaves hollow in her works, allowing them to become charged spaces that force viewers to become aware of the area between themselves and the work, or the work and the architectural environment it inhabits. Speaking of her sculptural work, Aitken says that she attempts to make "emptiness feel full."
In addition to her rigourous approach to scultpure, Aitken is attracted to the immediacy of drawing. Her two-dimensional works echo similar architectural forms and can be viewed as impossible or incomplete sculptures.
Jen Aitken (b. 1985, Edmonton, AB, Canada) is a Toronto based sculptor. She received her MFA in 2014 from the University of Guelph, ON, and her BFA in 2010 from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC. Her work has been exhibited at YYZ Artists' Outlet in Toronto and Kamloops Art Gallery and Richmond Art Gallery in British Columbia. Recent group shows include Paper Routes-Women to Watch 2020 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC and Des horizons d'attente at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montréal, QC. Aitken's first solo institutional exhibition, The Same Thing Looks Different, was on view at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto from June to September 2023.