Douglas Coupland: 12 works

'Through a wide range of media including assemblage, installation, painting, photography, sculpture and quilts, Coupland has persistently investigated Canadian cultural identity, both benign and menacing. Using imagery and objects latent with symbolic meaning for Canadians, he delineates what it means to be Canadian, offering a "secret handshake" not easily understood by others.'

'Not only does Coupland utilize the strategies of Pop Art by incorporating objects and images taken directly from everyday life, but he often passes these through the lens of new media.'

'Using imagery and objects latent with symbolic meaning for Canadians, he delineates what it means to be Canadian, offering a "secret handshake" not easily understood by others.'

'"After the work of securing temporary possession of a late 1950s modernist Vancouver bungalow slated for demolition, Coupland set out to create an environment that would function as his particular take on the complex meanings of Canada as a nation, contested land, woodlot, constitutional exercise, imaginary and unfinished social project. Having first wrapped the house in plastic sheeting and painting the entire inside of the struture in blinding white (a gesture to the proverbial white cube) and then proceeding to fill the house with what he described as 'images, objects, scraps and ideas,' the space once occupied by a mythically nuclear family was reinvented as a spectral, relational cabinet of curiosities that was a material translation of Coupland's critical reading of Canada."'

'Using letters, words and books as material and content for his art, Coupland harnesses the power of language in the visual realm.'

'An unnerving commentary on questions of governance and ecological fragility in Canada's distant northland, Coupland combines Styrofoam insulation, pieces of Canadian artist Thomas Harold Beament's decidedly problematic 1950s image of smiling 'Eskimos' in their majestic snow-bound habitat with a bright green metal cooler to fashion an elongated and lidded box that operates interchangeably as packing trunk and altar. On top of the hutch sits a Zenith 1000 radio that Coupland's physician father used when he was stationed in the north.'

'Through a wide range of media including assemblage, installation, painting, photography, sculpture and quilts, Coupland has persistently investigated Canadian cultural identity, both benign and menacing.'

'While Coupland retains Lichtenstein's Ben-Day dots, the majority of the pictorial field... is taken up by rows of horizontal bands of varying widths derived from airline barcodes.'

'--excerpt from Michael Prokopow's essay, "Coupland's True North Strong and Free," included in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything, published in 2014 by Black Dog Publishing and the Vancouver Art Gallery. "I've gone up to the Queen Charlotte Islands, which are actually called Haida Gwaii, for the last two years doing tsunami debris clearance.'

'As a writer and visual artist, Coupland has often disregarded the traditional divide between these disciplines. Using letters, words and books as material and content for his art, Coupland harnesses the power of language in the visual realm.'

'Growing up on the West Coast of North America in the latter half of the twentieth century, Douglas Coupland's childhood was imbued with a deep-rooted optimism, a sense that tomorrow would be an improvement on today.'

'The first and last Lego kit Coupland purchased as a child was No. 345, which forms a modern single-storey house complete with a fence, gate that opens and closes, carport and car.'