“Douglas Coupland: Everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything”
Curated by Daina Augaitis
Since the 1980s, Douglas Coupland has been building novels around the alienated miasma of the just-arrived present: surplus stores, Snackwell’s, dead dolphins, semidisposable Swedish furniture. All along, the Canadian author, who first came to fame for his novels Generation X (1991) and Microserfs (1995), has been forging art alongside these zeitgeisty narratives, and now the Vancouver Art Gallery is hosting the first major survey of his work. Set to fill nearly ten thousand square feet on-site and spill into the city beyond, the show is organized according to such topics as “Canada Noir” and the “21st Century Condition”—themes articulated via pixelated-looking Lego architecture and landscapes pastiching iconic Pop artists. A catalogue with contributions by, among others, William Gibson, Michael Stipe, and the artist-writer himself rounds out the exhibition, which culminates in The Brain, 2000–14, a room-spanning sculpture Coupland assembled out of objects culled from decades’ worth of accumulated ministorage.
