Archive for February, 2015

Douglas Coupland at the ROM

Posted: February 5, 2015 in galleries
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Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything

Royal Ontario Museum
until April 26, 2015

entrance to an exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum featuring a large yellow wall with the name Douglas Coupland in large black letters. In the distance are two women standing in front of a painting that is hung on point.

In the background is a large painting of geometric abstract shapes in yellows, reds and greys. In the foreground is a close up of two stacks of blocks. The blocks are old children's wooden building blocks but they are alll different. Three have letters of the alphabet on them, one has a picture of a birds nest.

The 21st Century Condition
“I want to explore how it feels to be inside the 21st century brain as opposed to the 20th century brain”

Six paintings arranged three across by two down, on a wall. One in grays, one in pink, one in purple, one in ornage and one in pale pink.

a large wall is covered with coloured rectangles and in each rectangle is an expression that has become common. For example, get a life, oh my god, delete entire history?, etc. A woman is standing to the left of the wall, taking a picture of it with her cellphone.

view of an art exhibit, some people are walking through it and a couple of people are looking at the art on the walls

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Painted with dots.  When they are hanging on the wall, they look abstract.
When they are shrunk down and viewed on a smartphone, the picture comes into focus.

three paintings hanging on a wall in an art exhibit. One is of Osama bin Laden and the other two are 9/11 related, New York .

update:  Here is an interesting article that appeared in the Torontoist on 24th Feb about this exhibit.

Douglas Coupland at MOCCA

Posted: February 4, 2015 in galleries
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Douglas Coupland’s
everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything
at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Queen St. West
until 19 April 2015

Secret Handshake
What makes Canadians Canadian?
What do we identify with that others don’t recognize?

close up of part of a quilt. One of the squares is made from fabric with a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player on it. Old chrome hubcaps have been added to the quilt.

A quilt made of plain beige fabric into which dreamcatchers of various sizes have been incorporated.
A low hutch with three drawers. The handle of each drawer is on old pepsi advertisement on an old bar from a door - the kind of bar that you would push on to open the door.

 One of the rooms of the exhibit features Coupland’s re-imagining of famous Canadian paintings,  paintings by Tom Thomson and Lawren Harris of the Group of Seven to name a couple.
In the center of the room is a black metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro transmission tower reminiscent of the ones damaged by the eastern Canada ice storm of 1998.

A large metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro (electricity) transmission tower is in the center of a room. There are paintings on the walls.

A large metal structure that is supposed to represent a damaged hydro (electricity) transmission tower is in the center of a room. There are paintings on the walls.

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Growing up Utopian

A portion of three Douglas Coupland creations are visible. In the foreground are numerous lego houses complete with yards and garages all laid out in a grid. In the background are wood shelves with household articles from the past. In the middle are lego towers in bright stripes and interesting shapes.
below: Towers, 2014
An urban jungle of imaginative lego towers created from selected parts of towers that were “crowd-sourced” at building events at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Close up of some of the brightly coloured lego towers in the art exhibit

below: 345 Modern House, 2014
One hundred identical houses built from a kit that was first issued in 1969.

A grid of white lego bungalows with black roofs with detached garages, green lego lawns and red fences.

 

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gumhead

Posted: February 4, 2015 in events
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Gumhead is a “gum-based, crowd-sourced, publicly interactive, social-sculpture self portrait” in the words of Douglas Coupland, the artist who conceived and developed this idea.

It sits inside the entrance of Holt Renfrew Men on Bloor St. West.

A large (about 6 foot tall) black head sits in the front of a menswear store. People have been encouraged to add chewed wads of gum to the head. It is about one third covered.

People are encouraged to add their own chewed gum with the intention that the head will become covered, obscured, and transformed.  And people have done so, some with imagination or whimsy.

He now has eyelashes on one eye.

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Gumhead is scheduled to remain until March 9th.
And yes, gum is provided…. as is the Purell!

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yet another proposal

Posted: February 2, 2015 in locations
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Development proposal sign

Bathurst and Robinson

an older two storey brick semidetached house at the corner of Bathurst and Robinson. No other houses are next to it.

the sign says:
“…to permit the development of a nine storey mixed use building…..
….. consisting of ground and 2nd floors with commercial….
…. 28 residential units….
… zero parking spaces ….”

standing alone

Posted: February 1, 2015 in locations
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at the corner of Redpath and Roehampton

A single family, two storey house stands alone in an otherwise vacant lot. The houses around it have been demolished. This last house has just begun to be demolished. There are many apartment buildings in the background.

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