New Pictures 7: Stan Douglas

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN, OCTOBER 9, 2012
“Stan Douglas: Then and Now,” a two-part photography installation featuring works by Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas (born 1960) inaugurates the MIA’s fourth season of its “New Pictures” series. Opening October 11, the exhibition presents six of Douglas’s large-scale photographs examining both past and present. Three prints that restage historical moments of social conflict are on display in the Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery (368) for the “Then” section; three recent straightforward photos of accumulated objects and an artist studio are juxtaposed with artworks in the MIA’s permanent collection in the “Now” section.

Since the late 1980s, Douglas has created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings that imply broader issues. Making use of new as well as outdated technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres and borrows from classic literary works to recreate historical scenes.

“Then” works include Ballantyne Pier, 18 June 1935 (2008), and Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008), which recreate scenes from social riots that occurred in Canada during the 1930s and 1970s; and Exodus, 1975 (2012),depicting the exodus of Portuguese immigrants during the Angola revolution in 1975. “Now” features photographs of actual scenes, set against historic art objects in the galleries. McLeod’s Books, Vancouver, 2006 hangs in the Modernist gallery to serve as a counterpoint to the idealized goals of modernist furniture, while Old Curio Shop (2010) and Artist’s Cabin (2010) are displayed near the museum’s period rooms.

Douglas received the prestigious Infinity Award for Art by the International Center for Photography in 2012. His works have been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including in three Venice Biennales and three dOCUMENTAs.

Douglas discusses his work at the MIA’S 4th Annual Arnold Newman Lecture on Thursday, October 11, at 7 p.m. in
the museum’s Pillsbury Auditorium.
Generous support for the “New Pictures” series is provided by the W. Duncan and Nivin Macmillan Foundation.
The Arnold Newman Lecture Series is made possible thanks to a generous gift from the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation.

PRESS CONTACTS
MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS
Anne-Marie Wagener, (612) 870-3280; awagener@artsmia.org
Tammy Pleshek, (612) 870-3171; tpleshek@artsmia.org