Douglas Coupland exhibit in Vancouver

This is another very tardy review.  The Douglas Coupland exhibit only runs for two more weekends (three if you count this weekend).  I do apologize about that, but my life has been hectic as should be clear from just a short inspection of the posts from 2014...

While I will mostly be focusing on the Coupland exhibit, there are some other quality exhibits on other floors and in most cases they are up for another couple of weeks past the closing of the Coupland.

I should say right up front I thought I was not going to care for the exhibit.  I generally find Coupland's books a bit empty (which is largely the point) and it is surprising how much he glamourizes the glass skyscrapers that make up most of downtown Vancouver.  He really does embrace the spirit of the age (this must be the only exhibit I've ever seen advertised in elevators -- see below), whereas I would say I have a far more complicated relationship with today's society, finding that many things I valued have not survived the Internet all that well.  I suppose this is an old (and trite) lament: we see it in Stefan Zweig (in the World of Yesterday) and even more acidly in the Frankfurt school, particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Should I really be aligning myself with unabashed elitists?  At the same time, I am sure I will never throw my lot in with the optimists who see things as always getting better.

At any rate, I liked the exhibit a lot more than I thought I would.  Coupland has a quite good grasp of pop art (while it isn't my favourite period -- I prefer the abstract expressionists that came immediately before then -- I still think they are generally worthy of study).

For an in-depth overview, you can go to this site.  One thing that was a bit different is that Coupland made it explicit that anyone that wanted to could take photos of his art and post them on-line, particularly to Flickr.  I have not spent a lot of time looking on-line for other people's photos, but I do have a few of my own.

Right off the bat, you start in a section that celebrates Canada, but Canada of the 1970s or so, with some of the objects even older from the 60s or 50s.  This is an intriguing era when Canada was sort of struggling with whether its ties with England were strong enough to counter-balance the trickle (turning into a flood) of US consumer goods (and later and more insidiously US media).  I think most objective observers would agree that the battle was lost by the late 1970s.

I felt the first part of the section had a shared sensibility with Rodney Graham, who has become a bit of an art world darling.  I will probably write a separate post about Graham later.  As it turned out, I had to skip out on a couple of exhibits of his work in Vancouver, right before I left.  But I did see a small, focused exhibit at VAG a couple of years ago.  This was probably my favourite piece from that exhibit.

Rodney Graham, Canadian Humourist, 2011

But back to Coupland: the first part of the exhibit displayed some interior shots that had this same kind of colour scheme.  But there was also an ice machine that held a dark secret.  The liquid pooling at the bottom was clearly blood.  Perhaps Fargo by way of Vancouver.

The next rooms were totally different.  There was a sculpture of a electric power line tower that had collapsed.  My son said it looked a bit like a fallen bull.  But on the walls were simplified versions of some Group of Seven painters.  I guess one could choose to take this as a slight or a sincere homage.  I suspect it was somewhere in between, but I actually thought they worked pretty well, and it indicated to me that Coupland really had engaged with the art at some level.  Here are a couple that appear primarily inspired by Lawren Harris.

 

Then there was a large section devoted to Lego buildings.  While we missed out on the all-night Lego building event, there were still bins of Lego for children to build with.  Here is the building my son worked on in an early phase.

After this, there was an entire room filled with aphorisms related to the Internet and the modern world.  Nothing quite as punchy as one might find in Nietzsche, but still a few zingers here and there.  Here are a few that I thought were worth repeating.

 

Then there was a room that showed Coupland grappling with the Pop artists of the 60s.  I liked this piece, which seemed a bit of a fusion of James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein.

I also thought that the mounted wigs, supposedly worn by Andy Warhol, were a nice touch.

The next section was a bit creepy where Coupland was sort of reflecting on 9/11 and the World Trade Center.  There were a couple of paintings that only came into focus when viewed through a cell phone.  Some of these showed the people falling from the towers, and a few showed Osama Bin Laden.  I preferred the ones that were slightly less weighted down with symbolism -- there was a series of just the World Trade Center facade -- which was Coupland riffing on Lichtenstein riffing on Monet. (My son photo-bombed this one.)

After this, there were two room-sized installations -- The World (dominated by petrochemical processing places) and The Brain (which had sort of a left brain-right brain, white-colour scheme going on).  Both were pretty overwhelming.

Douglas Coupland, The World, 2014

 

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

So certainly a lot to absorb.  But that is not all!

If one goes up a floor, there is considerably more on view. There is a bit of a traveling exhibit: "Lost in the Memory Palace: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller."  This was one view earlier in the spring at the AGO, and I was thrilled to see that the key pieces made it to VAG, and even a couple of pieces that I had not seen in Toronto.  This will be on view through Sept. 21 and is definitely worth a look.*

A very creepy piece is The Killing Machine, which combines electronic music (perhaps inspired by Berg's Wozzeck), Kafka's In the Penal Colony and a trip to the dentist.  (Not sure how long it will stay up here, but Youtube has a video of this piece.)  My very favourite piece in the Memory Palace is Storm Room, which does have to be seen in person, but it is basically a spartan room with a storm outside.  The ceiling occasionally drips real water into a bucket.  One advantage is that I was actually able to make it inside the The Dark Pool installation, whereas the lines were too long in Toronto.  So definitely a very cool set of exhibits on this floor.  I've written too much already, but here is a good blog covering the Memory Palace as installed in Toronto.

The next floor has a lot of pieces from the VAG's permanent collection.  Presumably, if they move to bigger digs closer to the Main library, more of their permanent collection will be on display.  I jokingly said that once this opened, it restored the natural order of things, as there was about a month where there was no Emily Carr on display.  I don't recall too much about this, other than they had a decent Jeff Wall piece, and I liked the urban themed room.  Unfortunately, they didn't allow photography up here, so no pictures.  Perhaps some day VAG will put together a proper catalog of their permanent collection.  This floor will be on display through mid October, and is worth a look if you are coming for the Coupland and/or the Cardiff-Miller exhibits.

Finally, on the top floor (where they traditionally display Emily Carr), they have some new acquisitions.  While it isn't going to be too everyone's taste, I liked Angela Grossman's Wish You Were Here.

Image Credits: OutofSight-08 Angela Grossmann Wish You Were Here, 1985 oil, tar, collage elements on plywood Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Pamela S. Boles Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

I found it vaguely reminiscent of Max Beckmann, maybe in the overall composition and the use of heavy black outlines.  One interesting fact is that it appears to be painted on a kind of textured wallpaper, which can only be made out up close.  Actually, Grossman had another piece I liked in the permanent collection a floor down.  Interestingly, I don't care for her current work, but perhaps she will return to her mid 80s style at some point.

So a lot to see and take in.  I think at this point, I need to stop.  My next posting will probably be one of the much delayed reviews for the Canadian book challenge.  Until then...

* After a considerable delay, the catalog finally turned up. (I can't imagine VAG was pleased about them not being available to sell during the exhibition.) It's actually quite thorough and nicely done, though I was surprised that they don't have a good picture of the blood from the ice machine, but fortunately, I have that posted just above.