Edwin Aitken

“Under trees like Durer’s, that today bear the weight of work—days uncomputed in their ripe abundancy enfruited, serving, patient, finding out the way”
from The Apple Orchard by Rainer Maria Rilke

Looking at Edwin’s work is like reading a poem when you only ever watch television. It has depth as well as immediate allure. It has clarity – but it is complicated. It yields a meaning straight away – but that meaning is very much a provisional one. It invites you to read it again and begin to analyse it in different ways.

His work encourages you to think about about big things but does so with a delicacy that is stealthy and surprising.The work strips down objects to an emblematic state, without losing their essential character as objects from the real world. Rather than barricading the viewer out, the dense agglomerations of objects and meanings invite you in.The work is a result of an ongoing and intense engagement with visual culture and the real world that is both wide and deep.

The construction of the book Life and Death is ample evidence of the intensity of this engagement. From the visual punch and wit of the A1 fold out drawing to the intelligence and insightfulness of the text, ‘Life and Death’ has real power and resonance.