The words of poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen are being shown in a new light – literally – in a new campaign from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO).

The effort capitalizes on the relative darkness of the winter season to find new ways to illuminate the artist’s own words, and in his own hand-writing – specifically through OOH projections of his words in contextually relevant places.

For example, “I showed my heart to the doctor. He said I just have to quit,” is projected on the side of a Rexall pharmacy. A space under a sign for the Ted Rogers School of Management reads, “I have no program, I have no five-year plan.” A downtown office building know for housing various tech companies has a projection reading, “They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within.”

Those displays are paired with a broader campaign on transit – including a Union Station takeover – as well as digital and social.

The campaign is in support of the AGO’s new exhibition, Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows, which uses rarely-seen archive material – such as concert footage, instruments, notebooks, lyrics and letters – alongside photos and art by the man himself to reveal lesser-known details of his multifaceted life and career.

“The campaign honours the sentiment of the exhibition, which is that everybody thinks they know Cohen. But really – as with any human being – there is so much more beneath the surface,” says Kimber Slater, director of brand marketing for the AGO. “The marketing campaign invites you to ‘Get the story behind the words,’ and that’s really what this exhibition does.”

The behind-the-scenes nature of the exhibit is meant to attract existing Cohen fans who want that inside story, but the impactful and provocative nature of the campaign is meant to draw in “novices” that might not be as familiar with his work.

“Leonard Cohen was a true artist in his writing, and he expressed himself in a variety of media through the years,” adds Erin Kawalecki, partner and CCO of Angry Butterfly, which was tapped by the gallery in September to develop the campaign. “He was witty, he was playful, he was an acute observer of the human condition, and as the exhibition shows, he never stopped creating.”