NIKOLAJ KUNSTHAL,
COPENHAGEN CONTEMPORARY ART CENTRE
MARCH 20 – MAY 10 2015
STAN DOUGLAS:
PHOTOGRAPHS 2008-2013
“There’s more truth in the lie than in the documentary” – Stan Douglas, The
Guardian, 2014.
Photo: Hastings Park 16 July 1955, 2008, courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, New York/London
and Victoria Miro, London. Scene from a racecourse in Vancouver, Canada, as it would have
looked in 1955. The photograph is a composite image of 30 different photos. From the series
Crowds and Riots (2008).
Canadian Stan Douglas (b. 1960) is internationally acknowledged as one of the
most original artists working within film and video. Now Nikolaj Kunsthal
presents another aspect of his oeuvre, the staged photography with which
Douglas has been working intensively in recent years.
Exhibition opening March 19 2015 5-7 pm
The Nikolaj Kunsthal presentation “Stan Douglas: Photographs 2008-2013”
features four monumental photographic series that have come into being in
the period 2008 to 2013.
In his works, Stan Douglas focuses on cultural, political and social movements
and events. His point of departure lies in specific historical occurrences. One
picture thus takes as its starting point the brutal police crackdown on an
otherwise peaceful sit-in in Vancouver on August 7 1971. Another work departs
from the Canadian dockworkers’ struggle for the right to organise and for
better working conditions at Ballantyne Pier in June 1935. However, both
photographs contain slight displacements dismantling the notion of objective
historiography.
Douglas’ photographic works make visible the contrast between the personal,
subjective experience of a place, an era or an event and its official
representation as historical fact. His works thus become an investigation of
how photographs over time attain the status of official documents, rigidifying
the way history is conveyed to us. Through photography Stan Douglas takes a
critical look at our notions of identity, rebellion and the use of force, and the
power of media images.
Andreas Brøgger, acting Director of Nikolaj Kunsthal, states:
“Stan Douglas is one of the most significant artists of the international art
scene. This exhibition at Nikolaj Kunsthal marks the first major Danish
presentation of his works. It will show a perhaps less known but nevertheless
highly important aspect of his production, namely his large photographic series
made in recent years. These are works that address our contemporary age
with considerable power. With one single photograph, Stan Douglas
demonstrates how complex any given event is and how meaning is created
through images.”
The exhibition at Nikolaj Kunsthal includes photographs from the series
Crowds and Riots (2008), Midcentury Studio (2010-2011), Disco Angola (2012)
and Interiors (2009-2013).
Photo: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008), courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, New
York/London and Victoria Miro, London. The photograph is a composite image of 15 different
photos. From the series Crowds and Riots (2008).
DISGUISED AS A PHOTOGRAPHER
Stan Douglas’ photographic works are less well known than his videos and
films, but they are no less impressive.
In their scope of production, they resemble a film set with a large cast and
extras, lighting, props and thorough digital post-production. Like his other
works, they contain numerous layers of meaning and are situated at the
crossroads between fiction and fact.
The artist employs stylistic modes of expression from classic Hollywood
movies, old murder mysteries, the golden age of jazz and film noir. He borrows
narrative techniques from great authors and his works are composed on the
basis of intense research into both the technical and stylistic means of
expression of a given historical period.
In his series Midcentury Studio (2010-2011), which is included at this
presentation, he thus takes on the identity of a nameless semi-professional
photographer in the years immediately after WW2. In order to do so, Douglas
has scrutinised nearly 6,000 photos within this category in order to mimic the
development of this particular type of photographic genre. The images reflect
the tabloids' hunger for new content as well as the cultural and photo-technical
developments of the time.
Stan Douglas immerses himself in the circumstances of photographic
production at various points in history, investigating in his own work how
modes of representation and narratives become iconic. At the same time, he
opens up history itself to new stories, events and actors from specific
historical contexts – post-war New York or New York and Angola in the 1970s
being two examples in this exhibition.
Photo: Incident, 1949, 2010, courtesy the artist, David Zwirner, New York/London and Victoria
Miro, London. The series Midcentury Studio (2010-2011) is a nod and a tribute to Canadian
press photographer Raymond Munro and the self-taught American freelance photographer
Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, and the style that characterised local reporting and
news from the world of sports, fashion and not least the criminal underworld in the years 1945
to 1951.
ABOUT STAN DOUGLAS
Stan Douglas (b. 1960) lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. He graduated
from the Emily Carr College of Art + Design in 1982.
Throughout his career, Stan Douglas has been a pioneer within the exploration
of the technical, visual and narrative dimensions of film and video. Since the
1980s, he has produced film works, photographs and installations
investigating historical events and sites. His works focus on the modes of
expression, codes and techniques employed by film, TV production and press
photos, while he himself also experiments with the most recent technologies
and modes of expression.
This exhibition is the first major presentation of Stan Douglas in Denmark.
“Stan Douglas: Photographs 2008-2013" is presented in collaboration with
Carré d'art – Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nimes, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Irish
Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Wiels, Centre d'Art Contemporain,
Bruxelles.
Stan Douglas has participated at the Documenta in Kassel and the Venice
Biennale several times. Venues that have produced solo exhibitions of the his
work include: The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, The Power Plant, Toronto and
Serpentine Gallery, London. Douglas' work is featured in the collections of,
among others, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, Museum of Modern Art, New
York and Tate Gallery, London.
D is co Ang ola (201 2)
This series is an investigation of the socio-political conditions that, within a short span of
time, brought about great social upheavals in two very different places of the world – Angola
and New York in the 1970s. Here, Douglas takes on the character of a documentarist
capturing the budding escapism and new racial interaction of New York’s disco scene in
that decade. In the other part of the series, he is a war photographer at the outbreak of the
Angolan civil war in 1975.
Midc en tury Stu dio (201 0-201 1)
This series is set in the period 1945-1951 and mimes the then photographic style, technique
and subjects with a perfect sense of period subjects, fashion, hairdos, situations and
interiors. It reflects the rise of photojournalism and the tabloid press due to the hunger for
sensation, crime reporting and celebrities.
Inte riors (2 009-201 3)
This series presents crowded interiors devoid of human presence: an artist’s studio, a
second-hand store, or the back room of a shop. In the extreme accumulation of objects,
these localities tell the tale of how time passes. With their silent depictions of a particular
orderliness to the mess, they do not so much function as portraits of the people not seen as
a reminder of the many layers of history gradually being added to our lives.
C row ds a nd R iots (2008 )
In this series the artist focuses on actual historical events in his home city Vancouver,
Canada. The works are enormous constructions, both in terms of production and image
size, reflecting on social structures, class struggle, rebellion and the enforcement of power.
They are digital composite images of several photos or comprehensive stagings with
locations, actors and props. The series features four photos.
CONTACT
Head of PR and communications Eva Bjerring
m: [email protected] or t: +45 33181784 / mobile +45 21547498
Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Centre
10, Nikolaj Plads
DK-1067 Copenhagen K
www.nikolajkunsthal.dk