Stan Douglas
‚The Secret Agent‘

New York

Photographer and cineast Stan Douglas is presenting his thirteenth exhibition with David Zwirner. On this occasion, the Canadian artist premieres his movie The Secret Agent – an adaptation of the eponymous 1907 political novel by Joseph Conrad.

Modernism, ‘failed utopia’, history and literature form the foundation of Stan Douglas’s works that have been presented internationally in galleries as well as at Documenta and Venice Biennale.

The Secret Agent is an essay of historical events happening in late 19th century London. The video installation is composed of twelve episodes displayed on six screens. The viewer, positioned in the middle of the installation is directly immersed in the movie’s universe. Film theorist Eric C.H. de Bruyn says: „The Secret Agent established permutational relationships between the set, the screen and the spectator, but what they have in common is a kind of game of hide-and-seek… Sometimes the viewer will have to piece together the fragments in order to make sense of the scene in its totality.“

Along with the movie, a survey of Douglas’s photographic works from the late 1980s until the present day are on view thus considering the links between documentation, place and history.

Hastings Park, 16 July 1955, 2008, Digital C-print mounted on Dibond aluminum, 59 1/2 x 88 3/4 inches (151.1 x 225.4 cm)

Stan Douglas, The Secret Agent, 2015. Photograph: Stan Douglas/David Zwirner

David Zwirner

March 31 – April 30, 2016

519 West 19th Street
New York, NY 10011
USA

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