Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, visual artist and designer. His first novel in 1991 was Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. He has published thirteen novels, a collection of short stories, seven nonfiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. Coupland’s novels and visual work synthesize high and low culture, web technology, religion, and changes in human existence caused by modern technologies.
Douglas Coupland Artist Sketch for Group Portrait 1957 from original 1957 photograph by Peter Croydon
Leave it to Douglas Coupland to change the façade of Oshawa’s Robert McLaughlin Gallery with eccentric humour. His new public art installation there, Group Portrait 1957, offers 11 circular shapes that, according to Coupland, “contain concentric rings which are then placed above a painted white metal framework so that in symphony, all 11 forms become ‘transmitters.’”
What is transmitted is a clear-cut reference to the history of the RMG as a haven for the works of Toronto abstract art collective Painters Eleven; Coupland’s sculpture functions as a group portrait of them.
Read the full article at canadianart.ca
