Artist, writer and cultural commentator Douglas
Coupland to open new contemporary art exhibition at The Rooms on May 19

Shauna McCabe, director of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, today announced the opening for the upcoming exhibition Douglas Coupland: Play Again? on Friday, May 19, and the public reception at 8 p.m. at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery. Vancouver writer, artist, and commentator Douglas Coupland is scheduled to be on hand for the event in conjunction with his most recent visual artwork.

Douglas Coupland: Play Again? is curated by director Shauna McCabe. The installation draws on Coupland�s strengths as a writer as well as the strong influence of visual design on his work. A novelist, Mr. Coupland is the author of the era-defining bestsellers Generation X and Microserfs, and, more recently, All Families are Psychotic, Hey Nostradamus! and Eleanor Rigby. His new novel, jPod, is currently being launched across Canada and reflects a return to questions of the nature of social life in a culture of technology and consumption.

"The installation Play Again?," says Ms. McCabe, "draws on these same themes to examine contemporary cultural preoccupations, hinting at a new cultural moment and the tension between the clear meaning of words and the pure design of the visual environment and popular culture with which we live."

Douglas Coupland studied art and design in Vancouver, Milan, and Sapporto and has been involved in exhibitions internationally, as in recent projects Super City and The Vancouver School. While, in 2006, he has collaborated on the development of a public park space in Toronto; Concord City Place. Ms. McCabe suggests his current project brings together various aspects of his interests: "As in many of his literary and visual works, Play Again? offers the same satirical glimpse of the forces that define our era, while involving him in the development of an imaginative landscape of a different form. Conceiving a space solely of text, Coupland offers a fresh new way of seeing the replication of mass culture and the abundance of the world around us."

Ms. McCabe says his work comes directly out of his unique relationship to contemporary landscapes, and what she describes as a "rare ability to clarify the very specific details of everyday experience common to places across the world, and what these mean in the big picture. His social critique is so precise, people actually recognize themselves in what he is describing and see it as true to them, often so true they may have thought it exclusive to their own experience. Coupland�s work, whatever the medium, epitomizes what art is all about, suggesting ways of seeing the world and of understanding the events and developments that surround us, and offering that lens on that world to other people. He is an exciting artist to work with, and I�m thrilled he and his artwork are here with us at The Rooms."

The opening reception for Douglas Coupland: Play Again? is on Friday, May 19, at 8 p.m.. Highlighting contemporary art and literature and featuring music by the Rosalines, the event is free and everyone is encouraged to attend. Bar service will be available.

Douglas Coupland: Play Again? is presented May 19 through September 17, 2006 in Level 4 of The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, 9 Bonaventure Avenue, St. John�s, Newfoundland. Call (709) 757-8040 or visit online at //www.therooms.ca for information about hours of operation, admission rates, and discounts.

Media contact: Deanne Hayward, The Rooms, (709) 757-8070, 691-5691

2006 05 12                                       12:15 p.m.