DOUGLAS COUPLAND | ROM and MOCCA
Douglas Coupland is everywhere in Toronto. The celebrated Canadian artist’s exhibition, “Everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything,” includes over 100 works of art at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), a first time collaboration between the two institutions.
With the quantity of work in Coupland’s exhibition, it is no surprise that the grandiose spectacle is divided across the two venues into six themes - Secret Handshake, The Brain, Pop Explosion, Words Into Objects, 21st Century Condition, and Growing Up Utopian. While the title of the retrospective refers to Coupland’s ongoing engagement with the tension between a defined place and identity and a growing ubiquity, through technology and access to information, the works are largely tied together visually. The eye-catching colours, kitsch items, ready-made works and pop-art pieces, although pleasing to the eye, are not the result of an artist who has pushed his boundaries of creativity. In fact, parallels can be drawn between Coupland and the American contemporary artist, Jeff Koons, as they both seem to share a factory-like output of large-scale, lustruous objects.
The artist’s Slogans for the 21st Century (2011-2014) is curated Salon style, so that the colourful blocks of humorous phrases are arranged as a grid on the wall. Over 100 short sentences - such as, “Delete entire history?” or “Sharing is Ownership for Losers” - present surface level commentary on our cultural world. But, the simple sentences with pre-packaged meanings are exactly what Coupland is striving to explore. Coupland states, “If you were to attach a stick to each of these slogans and carry them in the street, would they read as protest or would they read as complicit guilt?” Deftly capturing the zeitgeist of the moment, or as the artist declares “the early 21st century condition,” Coupland’s post-media practice is unquestionably aimed to be visually engaging.
Although these ideas might not be novel, they inevitably make a point of catching the eye of the general public and luring them in (Perhaps, to snap a photo for Instagram?). This is arguably one of the reasons that Canada's luxury retail store, Holt Renfrew is sponsoring the exhibition, as the placement of Coupland’s Gumhead in the new Men’s store in Yorkville works seemingly to entice viewers into their doors. The doorman is instructed to tell people to stick gum onto the seven-foot sculpture and to offer confused, but delighted spectators a picture with the self-portrait bust. All of this begs the question, however, is the exhibition a celebration of contemporary Canadiana contemporary art or is it a fete of the ways that institutions can endorse and arguably benefit from the career of an illustrator-turned-artist?
Over all, the multi-venue exhibition is a treat to see, and has set a new standard for the capacity for artistic institutions to work together and put on a one-man exhibition across a megalopolis.
Everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything is on at the ROM from January 31 to April 26 and at MOCCA from January 31 to April 19. GUMHEAD will be on display at Holt Renfrew Mens until March 9.
