Stan Douglas

IMMA presents the work of Canadian artist Stan Douglas in Ireland for the first time. The exhibition, Mise en Scène includes over 40 works, with a special focus on the photographs Douglas has produced since 2008, providing a rich introduction to the artist's practice. 

Stan Douglas came to international prominence in the 1990s when his film installation Der Sandmann was one of the highlights of Documenta X in 1997. Born in 1960 in Vancouver, Canada, Douglas is known for his films, photographs and installations that use new and outdated technologies, the media of cinema, TV and photography, the conventions of various Hollywood genres (including film noir and the Western) and reference classic literary works (notably, Samuel Beckett, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Marcel Proust, and Franz Kafka), to examine intersections of history and memory in evocative, mesmerising artworks.

The exhibition presents critically acclaimed photographic works ranging from his Crowds and Riots Series, 2008, to Mid Century Studio, 2010–2011, to some of his latest photographs, such as Hotel Vancouver, 2014. The exhibition also brings together the photograph series Malabar People, 2011, and Disco Angola, 2012, as well as the large-scale series of Interiors, 2009–11. Douglas's monumental 2013 jazz-jam film Luanda - Kinshasa, 2013 an installation video featuring famed jazz musician Jason Moran in a re-creation of a 1973 Miles Davis recording session in the legendary Columbia 30th Street studio, NYC, is also presented at IMMA.

The exhibition is curated by Seamus Kealy, Director, Salzburger Kunstverein, and is part of an ongoing tour involving Carré d'Art - Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France; Haus der Kunst, Munich; and Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen (2013–15).