Stan Douglas: Humor, Irony and the Law

David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition by Stan Douglas. In 2007, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Württembergicher Kunstverein in Stuttgart, Germany jointly hosted Douglas' first museum retrospective, surveying the artist's key works over the past two decades, and published a comprehensive catalogue. Douglas has recently been the focus of solo exhibitions at the Vienna Secession, Vienna, Austria (2006); Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2006); Art Gallery of York University, Toronto, Canada (2006); Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (2006); and Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska (2005). He co-curated Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection, Films, Videos, and Installations from 1963 to 2005 at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany in 2006. A monograph of the artist's work from the Friedrich Christian Flick Collection was recently published by Dumont. In February, Stan Douglas: Klatsassin will be on view at Vancouver Art Gallery. This is Douglas' ninth solo exhibition at David Zwirner.

The exhibition features a new series of large-scale photographs. Using his native Vancouver as a local example, Douglas explores crowd phenomena in the 20th century. Each of the four photographs takes a public event as its starting point, ranging from a 1912 Free Speech Demonstration to the 1935 Battle of Ballantyne Pier to a 1955 horserace at Hastings Park (pictured above). In the work Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008), Douglas stages a scene from the famous Gastown Riots, which exploded mounting tensions between local hippies and law enforcement. Striving for historical accuracy, the work replicates local businesses, as well as music posters and newspapers from the time. Commissioned by Westbank Projects, the image will be on view later this year as a 44-foot photographic mural in the Atrium of the new Woodward's development, located at Abbott and Cordova in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Read more

For more information about available works contact inquiries@davidzwirner.com