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Douglas Coupland sprung upon popular culture in 1991 when he named a generation and launched his career with the novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Since that time Coupland has published another dozen novels and expanded his public engagement as an artist and designer working in several media. In Toronto he is particularly known for his numerous installations at Canoe Landing Park in Concord CityPlace including Bobber Plaza and Tom Thomson's Canoe, the giant red canoe which overlooks the Gardiner Expressway and Toronto Harbour beyond.
New work by Coupland was recently installed in the lobby of 123 Front Street West, also known as Citigroup Place in the Financial Core, while an even newer work is now being assembled at Emerald City, a nascent condominium community in North York. At both locations Coupland is using boldly coloured abstract forms to provoke the imagination of viewers. At Oxford's Citigroup Place in particular, he is seeking to reach the viewer's Canadianness.
Coupland is pictured above with David Costello, Vice President of Real Estate Management for the Oxford Properties Group at the recent unveiling of the work. Behind the men is Crystalline Interpretation, Jack Pine, one of the two pieces that Coupland has created for the lobby space, an abstract 3D form of mostly triangular colour fields, the palette of which is inspired by Tom Thomson's Jack Pine, a piece of true Canadian iconography which hangs in the National Gallery of Canada and the national consciousness. Coupland's take on the painting pulls out the heightened colours of the Algonquin Park lakeside scene at sunset.
The second piece Coupland abstracts, below, is Group of Seven artist JEH MacDonald's Mist Fantasy, which hangs in the Art Gallery of Ontario. Both works have been published on Canadian postal stamps, exhibited internationally, reproduced on souvenirs, and are part of the country's cultural and spiritual psyche. Coupland poses below with Karen Mills and Ben Mills of Public Art Management who oversaw the production and installation of the works at Citigroup Place, and who are also involved at Emerald City.
The colour palette of Crystalline Interpretation, Mist Fantasy, takes on the more pastel tones found in MacDonald's painting of the wilderness of Ontario's Algoma Country in early dawn light while mist is still lifting. Oxford Properties' commissioning of the work goes beyond the City of Toronto's Percent for Public Art program as a voluntary improvement to the lobby space, a program they are pursuing in various buildings and which we have previously reported on.
While the connection to the original paintings may only be made obvious to the viewer through the names given the new works, Coupland's hope is that the viewer will innately feel the Canadian landscape in the tones and be reminded of the natural grandeur of our land.
In North York at ELAD Canada's Emerald City development, most of Coupland's work is still waiting to be revealed, but the underlying superstructural pylons for four colourful cones to be called Four Seasons have now been raised.
Ranging from 48 to 60 feet in height, the cones start at the southeast corner of Don Mills Road and Sheppard Avenue and continue southeast through the site.
Each cone will display bands of bright colours based on Laurentian pencil crayons.
Each cone represents another season—does the completed tip of this cone divulge its identity as the fall cone? The heat of summer may be represented here though too…
We will have to wait for the official unveiling next year to learn all of the answers. One of four cones however, the furthest to the southeast, appears to be complete, and we are guessing that this one may be winter.
Beyond the four cones, seven tall coloured cylinders by Coupland are also on order for the larger site, one of which is pictured in a rendering of the nearby Parkway Forest Community Centre, now under construction down the street, and linked below.
Want to know more Emerald City and the adjacent Community Centre? Our dataBase files follow. They include many renderings and lots of information on the developments. Want to talk about it all? Choose one of the associated Forum thread links to get in on the conversation, or leave a comment in the space provided on this page.
