Jen Aitken makes sculptures that combine perceptual ambiguity with structural clarity. She uses common industrial materials to create unidentifiable forms about intimacy, syntax, and bodily space. Aitken completed her MFA in 2014 at the University of Guelph, Ontario, and her BFA in 2010 at Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Aitken was featured in the 2020 Women to Watch exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. She presented her first institutional solo show at The Power Plant, Toronto in 2023, titled The Same Thing Looks Different, which was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue. Her first large-scale public sculpture was installed at the new headquarters of the National Bank of Canada, Montreal, in 2023. Aitken’s work is in public collections across Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Aitken is based in Toronto.
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Artwork description
Presque vu (Almost Seen) is a three-dimensional drawing made of bronze segments arranged together as if frozen mid-movement. From a distance, the sculpture describes distinct volumes of negative space, held within its contours. Up close, its cohesiveness as a weightless image breaks apart as you observe its materiality – intimidating mass, exposed hardware, bands of brushed and raw metal marked with traces of the fabrication process. Presque vu describes the feeling of knowing something intuitively, yet being unable to articulate it with words.