Doug Aitken | postmedia.net

In one of its most ambitious projects to date, the Serpentine has commissioned Doug Aitken, the Los Angeles-based film and installation artist to produce a new work for the Gallery. Hailed as one of the most exciting young artists of his generation, his work has been described as 'pure communication', mixing the media of film, video, photography and sound. His installation electric earth, which won the International Prize at the 1999 Venice Biennale, encircled the viewer with a mesmerising and eerie evocation of dislocation in the modern urban landscape.

For new ocean, the Serpentine has given Aitken unprecedented access to the entire building, where he will thread a sequence of filmed images, sound and photographic works throughout the exhibition spaces and beyond to the lantern on the Gallery's roof. For the first time, visitors will begin their journey in the basement of the Serpentine, emerging via stairs into the main Galleries. Shot in fictional realities created for the work and actual locations such as the Arctic and Argentina, new ocean creates a new topography of a world in constant change.

At the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, the Jury awarded Aitken the Premio Internazionale for his installation Electric Earth.

Born in Redondo Beach, California, in 1968, Doug Aitken studied at Marymount College, Palos Verdes, in 1986–87 and at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, in 1987–91. He began his career as a prolific director of music videos, for artists including Fatboy Slim, Iggy Pop, Barenaked Ladies, and m-ziq. A book of his photography was published in 1998 under the title Metallic Sleep.