What is Reality? and Other Questions I Ask Myself While Looking at Street Art

Douglas Coupland sure gets around the Vancouver art scene. The man is bent on bending our reality and transform it into the multi-media psychedelic kaleidoscope that he appears to think it is. I suspect he's not alone. I recently posted about his Golden Tree, and there are various other art works of his throughout the city, tripping out unsuspecting citizens who stumble upon them.

I was hanging out by the harbour when I came across what I call the Pixelated Whale. It has been designed in such a way that as one approaches the sculpture, the pixel-like blocks become clearer. The effect is similar to that of zooming into an image on the screen. It creates a subtle breaking of barriers between the digital and the so-called 'real.'

After researching it, the sculpture turned out to be a work by none other than Mr. Coupland. I should have known. It is called Digital Orca, but people also refer to it as Pixel Whale or Lego Orca. I wasn't too far off the mark. It stands 25 feet tall and the cubes are made of aluminum. Real orcas sometimes appear in the waters behind it, so this is an apt location for this noble wolf of the sea.

Coupland is not alone in trying to tinker with our conceptions of reality, and here's another piece of urban art that made me go hmmm...🤔

Lightshed by Liz Magor

And if you're into tentacles, then I will just leave this here.

Other art found on the streets is more traditional but also mixes modern methods and techniques to create imposing experiences.

I found the following one in a shopping mall. It is a mix of traditional native art with modern metallurgical elements.

All this mind-bending modern art, I thought, what would the noble founders of this fair city think? Speaking of which, I found a statue of Simon Fraser looking pensive near the river that bears his name. What's he thinking about? I'm sure modern art is the farthest thing from his mind.

Simon Fraser was the bold explorer who threw himself into the rugged and dangerous wilderness of British Columbia then traversed the very dangerous Fraser River, a waterway with tremendous importance to the development of this province. He was a man of nature, so perhaps he would not be so at ease in a neon-bright futuristic metropolis.

Maybe he would be happiest with just a few simple works of art in a cottage somewhere in the wild.

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