Jeremy Couillard Jeremy Couillard is an American digital artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His artwork consists of acrylic paintings, kinetic sculptures, 3D animation, 3D printing, video game art, and virtual reality.  He was awarded 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Digital Media.^[1]  His work comments on and incorporates concepts of psychology, drug use, technology, pseudo-profundity and psychedelia.  He is influenced by his growing up in an increasingly tech-driven society.  He is most noted for his work “Out of Body Experience Clinic” (2015), an art installation that featured virtual reality technology that allowed visitors to experience surrealist virtual landscapes of his own design.

Couillard was born in Livonia, Michigan in 1980.^[2]  He took an interest in art at a young age and was inspired by technology and the way it’s influence on the world grew throughout his childhood.  As an adult he discusses his interest in the viewpoint of technology that his particular generation has, saying "we are the last generation to remember what it was like before technology was everywhere. Like, we remember rotary phones. I guess the zeitgeist that I’m into is how technology is advancing and changing our everyday lives."^[3]

He was predominantly self-taught until he attended Michigan State University.  After graduating from Michigan State with his Bachelor’s degree, he later attended Columbia University and graduated with an MFA in painting in 2012.  It was there he met many teachers and mentors he considered inspiring like Dana Schutz, Matthew Ritchie, Jon Kessler, and Douglas Repetto.  It was Kessler who suggested that Couillard try putting his videos inside his paintings. ^[4]

“Out of Body Experience Clinic” (2015) was a multimedia installation that involved Couillard transforming Louis B James Gallery into a “Out of Body Experience” Clinic.  “Patients” were welcomed into a realistic waiting room, to the point where confused visitors asked when the art gallery closed and became a doctor's office. The waiting room not only contained typical free coffee and couches^[5], but also unsettling 3D printed figurines that were positioned in the room as well as acted in the animated news reel playing while visitors waited for their “appointment”.^[6] It was during this appointment that they were invited to put on Oculus Rift goggles and explore a surrealist virtual landscape giving a similar sensation to being under the influence of drugs like marijuana. ^[7]

- The Rotterdam Film Festival, Rotterdam, Netherlands

- Trafo, Szczecin, Poland

- the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center with Ben Hall, New York, NY

- Art Los Angeles Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (solo)

- Zhulong Gallery, Dallas, TX (solo) 

- Louis B. James, New York, NY (solo). ^[8]

Couillard completed a virtual reality video presented by the New Museum and Rhizome and an installation built around his video game Alien Afterlife at yours mine & ours gallery in New York, NY. ^[9]

Couillard’s work has been written about in VICE, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Blouin Art Info, Art in America and more. 

He was also recently awarded a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Digital Media. 

Couillard has been Assistant Professor of New Media at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York since 2014. 

Jeremy Couillard has been curated for Daata Editions by yours, mine & ours gallery. ^[10]

When digital art first started to become a reality, many artists were critical of the duality between traditional fine art and new computer technology. Many of those well versed in the art world believe computers were "incompatible with the traditions of the fine arts."^[11] While the skeptics existed, there were a significant number of artists that embraced the computer as a tool for art and continued that belief even to today^[12]. Couillard himself embraces the integration of fine art and digital art. Couillard's body of work incorporates a variety of media, but is particularly focused in digital media, with a focus on the differences between digital and analog media and how the two concepts can be integrated. Of this integration, Couillard explains, "I like painting technology too, as a kind of analogue record of it. It’s so interesting to me because we are the last generation to remember what it was like before technology was everywhere." ^[13]

Psychology and its many different categories are often incorporated in the work of artists and their depiction of the state of mind of themselves, their art, and their audience.^[14] Couillard's work features many different types of psychological disorders and issues. A key disorder referenced in his work is anxiety. On discussing the characters in his piece "Out of Body Experience Network", he states "I think their thoughts are just pure anxiety; maybe they’re instinctual. They’re just on repeat and they’re really anxious about that. They know that they shouldn’t be on repeat and maybe they need to be full humans with consciousness but instead they’re just 1s and 0s."^[15] Much of Couillard's work is rooted in concepts of neurosis and how that affects individuals as well as interacts with drug usage and the experience of art.

Drug use is a common theme throughout Couillard's work. While cannabis is often referenced in regards to his work, Couillard says, "I don’t know about cannabis specifically but the idea of drugs definitely influenced the project. The idea of having a strange experience that makes you question material reality."^[16] Couillard incorporates virtual reality in his work in an attempt to replicate the experience of being under the influence of drugs to give visitors a curated, surreal experience. He claims that virtual reality is the closest thing to offering a drug induced experience to gallery visitors. Couillard explains the influence of drug use on his work saying "I’m pretty inspired by stoner ethos. I like pseudo-profundity and psychedelia. I like super saturated, Peter Saul-esque colors. I like the idea of esoteric and political conspiracies, going down rabbit holes deeper and deeper."^[17]

Eiserman, J., & Hushlak, G. (2013). "Something from Nothing": How Digital Art Recreates the Image. International Journal Of The Image, 3(3), 85-101.

Smith, W. S. (2015). Nam June Paik. Art In America, (3), 155.

Knowles, K. (2012). Patterns of Duality - Between/Beyond Dada and Surrealism: Man Ray's Emak Bakia (1926). Avant-Garde Critical Studies, 2777-87.

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