"Bring Me The Head Of Vincent Van Gogh" Asks Artist Douglas Coupland

Canadian Artist Launches a Global Search for Van Gogh's Lookalike

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Jun 21, 2016, 08:00 ET

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, June 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- I'm Douglas Coupland, a writer and artist based in Vancouver, Canada. I'm currently crowd-sourcing the planet looking for the head of Vincent Van Gogh — or rather, his closest lookalike. The head that comes closest will become the source material for a large bronze sculpture commission. I'm learning that most people have someone in their life who looks like Vincent van Gogh. It could be your next door neighbour. It could be a guy at work. It could be you. I'm asking people to submit photos of their suggested candidate to the website iamvincent.com.

The one person who the artist thinks best resembles Vincent van Gogh, will be given €5,000 euros and will be flown with a guest to Vancouver for a unique experience. They will be 3D-scanned and their facial data will become Vincent van Gogh's likeness on Coupland's final 2 metre by 3 metre sculpture, forever immortalizing them in bronze and on a plaque bearing the lookalike's name.

The Vincent van Gogh bronze will be the first in an ongoing series of commissioned monumental outdoor works titled "Redheads." Following Van Gogh there will be any number of redheads.

Why redheads?
"I'd like it to trigger discussion about new relationships between science, art and globalization," states Coupland.

Redheadedness is the most recent successful human mutation. Between one and two per cent of the world's population is redheaded, and in north European and western countries, this number can rise to six per cent. It appears in people with two copies of a recessive allele on chromosome 16 which produces an altered version of the MC1R protein. This is a complex way of saying that there is no way of telling when a gene is going to change, and what sort of characteristic it will bring about. This genetic magic is a microcosm of the way in which all life on earth changes with time. I want this first bronze piece to be eternal but I also want it to be imbued with the twenty-first century.

On making big head sculptures:
Over the past decade Douglas Coupland has been making a lot of art and public art involving large heads. His "Gumhead" began as an outdoor public artwork in Vancouver in the summer of 2014, a fiberglass self-portrait. It was seven-feet-tall and over four months it accumulated a quarter-million pieces of chewing gum applied by the public. After Vancouver, "Gumhead" went to Toronto and to Sao Paulo and Brasilia in Brazil. For additional details visit: www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_gumhead.html

How to submit a photo:
Simply upload a photo to iamvincent.com While you're on the website you can read Coupland's Vincent van Gogh Blog, view the latest entries and vote for your favorite photo. Photo entries will be accepted until August 20^th, 2016 (midnight, Pacific Time).

About Douglas Coupland:
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist, visual artist and designer. Since his 1991 novel, Generation X, Coupland has published fourteen novels and short story collections as well as several works of nonfiction including a 2010 biography of Marshall McLuhan. He has written and performed for England's Royal Shakespeare Company and in 2008 created a 13-episode TV series based on his 2006 novel, jPod. A 1984 art school graduate, Coupland's visual work in the 1990s was the creation of the Internet aesthetic in conjunction with Wired magazine as well as his own website and blogs. In 2000 he resumed the making of physical works. In recent years his work has been central to numerous international solo and group shows. Coupland is a contributor to the New York Times, e-flux, DISonline, Artsy, Vice online and has a fortnightly column with the FT Weekend Magazine in London. Since February 2015 he has been artist in residence at the Google Cultural Institute in Paris. https://www.coupland.com/