Stan Douglas

Through photography, film and installation, Canadian artist Stan Douglas has, since the late-1980s, examined complex intersections of narrative, fact and fiction while simultaneously scrutinising the media he employs, technology's role in image making and how it shapes our understanding of reality. Douglas' work is often in the first instance an examination of place but entangled with the detail of specific geographical and political circumstance is a diverse range of source material that has included the literary constructs of Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Samuel Beckett and ETA Hoffmann, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles.

While we may recognise the literary, filmic or musical references, along with the stories, places or even characters appropriated in these complex works, expectations are often frustrated. Instead of narrative fulfilment, Douglas offers us complexity, perplexity and doubt. The artist has remarked that ‘life is all middle’ and in Douglas’ work viewers often find themselves plunged into events whose beginnings are obscured and whose ends seem to dissolve into mutability.

About the Artist

?Born in 1960 in Vancouver, where he continues to live and work, Stan Douglas has been the subject of numerous exhibitions at prominent institutions worldwide.

Recent solo exhibitions include Hessel Museum of Art, New York (2025); Kunsthaus, Potsdam, Germany (2022); Venice Biennale, Canadian Pavilion, Venice (2022); Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; The Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection, Paris (2021); Victoria Miro, London (concurrently on view at David Zwirner, New York, 2020); Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin (2019-2020); MUDAM, Luxembourg (2018–19); the Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg (2016); Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida (2016); Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg, Austria (2016); WIELS, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels (2015); Museu Coleçäo Berardo, Lisbon (2015); Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2014-15); Carré d’Art - Musée d’Art Contemporain, Nîmes (2013, solo, travelling to Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2014; Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, 2015 and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2015); Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota (2013) and the Moscow Photobiennale 2013.

His work has additionally been presented at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2024); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2020); Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2020); 58th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2019); Sharjah Biennial 14, UAE (2019); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2019); Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2018); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2018); Tate Modern, London (2018); Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland (2017); Hayward Gallery, London (2016-17); Audain Art Museum, Whistler (2016); The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2016); Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2014); Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2013); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, (2012), travelling to Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2012); ZKM/Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe (2010); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010).

Work by the artist is held in major museum collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Pérez Art Museum Miami; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, UK; Vancouver Art Gallery; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.

Stan Douglas is the recipient of the 2016 Hasselblad Award and the 2019 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts. He represented Canada at La Biennale di Venezia in 2022.