Stan Douglas (Phaidon Contemporary Artist Series)

Stan Douglas is a Canadian artist whose work combines traditional cinematic techniques with new technologies to produce remarkable images, often suggestive of repressed memories and forgotten histories. These visually complex works can vary from dramatic contemporary video portraits, to serene landscapes, to large installations which envelop the viewer in a sensual play of sound and images. From his early brief dramas for television depicting uncanny suburban encounters to his spectacular split-screen installation Der Sandmann, Douglas' work is layered with the artist's observations on social alienation and psychological states.
Canadian curator and writer Scott Watson surveys the artist's work in relation to late 20th-century aesthetics, politics and psychoanalysis while American artist Diana Thater conducts an in-depth interview on the sources behind Douglas' work. Carol J Clover, an expert on film and Nordic mythology, focuses on the fusion of film, psychoanalysis and fable in Der Sandmann. The Artist's Choice text is by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze from his 1967 essay 'Humour, Irony and the law which reflects on the issues of power and powerlessness also central to Douglas' art. The histories and ideas behind the artist's works are explained through project descriptions, notes and scripts in the Artist's Writings section, alongside an essay on the teleplays of Samuel Beckett and an interview with curator and critic Lynne Cooke.