Stan Douglas, “Humor, Irony and the Law”

by | Dec 6, 2008 | Writing | 0 comments

I have been consumed with all things Christmasy lately, so my art-seeing and blog-updating have been spotty at best. But I did manage to put together a review of Stan Douglas’ “Humor, Irony and the Law” for Canadian Art‘s website.

Stan Douglas, Hastings Park, 16 July 1955, 2008
Courtesy David Zwirner

I’m still not entirely sure what to make of the new photos with staged actors just yet, but am trying to work through it. The New York Times’ Ken Johnson published a review while I was there that was sort of flippant about the work’s success, saying of the photos, “[a]s images they are less interesting than the stories they are supposed to represent.”

Which might be true, but Douglas’ still images are always about incredibly specific, nuanced and often obscure moments in history. I think his point is to bring them to light in order to underscore the way these potentially revolutionary actions were stalled or forgotten and might one day be recuperated, still having potency in present day conditions.

Stan Douglas, Vidéo, 2007, Installation view at David Zwirner, New York


And, despite whatever you might think of the photos, the critical response to Douglas’ video (punnily titled Vidéo) has been pretty consistently laudatory. It’s the first time in a long time that I’ve happily sat through an 18 minute video twice (I have a surprisingly low tolerance for long video work for someone who really likes video art. It has to be amazing if it’s going to hold my attention past 7 minutes).

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