If you’re a dead ringer for dead Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, then Douglas Coupland would like to borrow your ear.
On Wednesday, the Vancouver-based artist launched a global search for a van Gogh lookalike to be used in his next project, asking any interested candidates to contact him online.
“I’m learning that most people have someone in their life who looks like Vincent van Gogh. It could be your neighbour. It could be a guy at work. It could be you,” Coupland said in his call for submissions.
The chosen winner is promised €5,000, or about $7,200, and a free flight to Vancouver with a guest.
Coupland said the head of this spitting image will be 3D-scanned and turned into a two metre-by-three metre sculpture, “forever immortalizing them in bronze and on a plaque bearing the lookalike’s name.”
That sculpture will be the first in a series of outdoor works titled “Redheads,” exploring new relationships between science, art and globalization, Coupland said.
This isn’t the artist and novelist’s first time using an over-sized head in his work. In 2014, Coupland debuted a two-metre-tall self-portrait outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, and asked passersby to cover it with used chewing gum.
It was later transported to Toronto and then the Brazilian cities of Sao Paulo and Brasilia.
Submissions to the van Gogh lookalike search can be submitted at the IamVincent website or by using the hashtag #IamVincent on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
They will be accepted until midnight on Aug. 20.
