Exhibitions

Sheri Bakes | Open the World
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
September 8-22, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8, 2-4PM

Open the World is a body of work inspired by a farm on Vancouver Island. 

The title stems from a painting that was made upon arriving to this farm and depicts a heavily abstracted opening of light through a forest of trees along a fleshy coloured rain soaked muddy path. 

Marshall McLuhan wrote, "I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it." 

Part of the interest in making this show has been to explore and trace out an opening; a light-line thread of hope through McLuhan's thoughts on art as a 'distant early warning system.' 

These works are simply meditations on light, movement and somatic, tactile experience in nature. 

VIEW THE SHERI BAKES COLLECTION

Joseph Plaskett | A Centenary
July 7 - 28, 2018
Running Concurrently at Bau-Xi Vancouver & Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday July 7, 2-4 pm, Upper Gallery

"The art that I make and that I see others make confirms the miracle of being alive. Almost every day I live in a state of exaltation." - Joseph Plaskett

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Joseph Plaskett’s life, Bau-Xi Vancouver and Toronto are pleased to present A Centenary, concurrent exhibitions of select works from the estate of Joseph Plaskett, on view from July 7^th to July 21^st.  

A consummate bohemian, masterful painter and a prolific artist until his passing, Plaskett dedicated his practice to the intimate expression of everyday life: fruits and vegetables artfully scattered about, arrangements of potted plants and fresh flowers, portraits of the artist and his friends, interiors of his Paris apartment and landscapes of his Suffolk garden.

“The word I choose to describe the quality of a still life is intimacy. I am closer and closer to the small world surrounding me and its surroundings. I make constant discoveries.” - Joseph Plaskett

Despite the enduring subject matter throughout Plaskett’s oeuvre —the domestic scenes and humble artifacts of his immediate surroundings — the artist’s treatment of light, colour and form was continually evolving and ever exploratory, shifting from the dramatic contrast and painterly realism of his earlier works to the brightly saturated, graphic forms of his later years, lovingly rendered and infused with warmth and humanity of the artist’s hand.

During his lifetime, Joseph Plaskett became well established for his contribution to Canadian art historical canon, and was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art and inducted as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. Bau-Xi Galleries are honoured to share this special collection of works with admirers and collectors in celebration of Joseph Plaskett’s art, life, and legacy.

 VIEW THE COLLECTION

Gordon Wiens | Nature Transformed
June 9-23
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 16, 2-4 pm 
Held in conjunction with the 7th Annual South Granville ArtWalk
Saturday June 16th, 10 am - 5 pm - Artist in Attendance

Gordon Wiens’ acrylic paintings are largely inspired by the imperfect beauty and impermanence of decaying objects found in nature. Wiens uses an intuitive approach to his layering of texture, colour and form. Wiens’ material erosion of paint mimics nature’s elements as the artist’s forms are fragmented through the act of pulling and erasure.  Multiple layers of forms and lines are added, covered and altered. Through the artist’s process of painting, a subtle transformation occurs. A vestige of each layer remains to illustrate the understated and undefinable qualities of the transient beauty of nature.


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Joshua Jensen-Nagle | Endless Summer
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
May 5 - 19
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 24, 2-4PM

In his acclaimed series Endless Summer, Canadian photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle continues to­­ capture aerial images of sunbathed beaches around the world, transforming crowds of people into toy-like figures set against sublime natural backdrops.

Approaching the medium of photography as a “means to evoke emotion rather than document a reality”, Jensen-Nagle’s beach-goers in repose evoke a collective reminiscence, sparking personal associations that might resemble the artist’s own nostalgia for a “childhood spent on the shore… memories of never-ending days floating in the water, jumping waves.”

Jensen-Nagle’s bird’s-eye view and immersive, large-scale format disturbs one’s sense of depth and perspective to abstract these familiar sites of leisure; dramatic visual patterns emerge from the photographic surface: colourful umbrellas form recurring motifs, swimmers afloat become the material of choice for the artist’s mark-making, poised between the painterly washes of sand and surf demarcating these compositions.

Beyond their evocative potential and arresting imagery, Joshua Jensen-Nagle’s scenes inspire a dialogue revolving around the nuanced spatial history of the beach. The effect of this imaging is multifold, a study of topographical and ecological tensions between the boundaries of land and sea; a liminal space between nature and civilization, the familiar and unknown. Situated in this intersectional space, Jensen-Nagle examines the ways in which humanity inhabits these environments at the furthest reaches of the earth; ruminating upon the nature and evolution of leisure and its place in the breakneck pace of our everyday lives.

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Janna Watson | Light is Heavy
January 13-27, 2018
3045 Granville St, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Light is Heavy presents a diverse body of work from contemporary abstract painter Janna Watson—a visually poetic culmination of her practice to date. In this suite of paintings the artist explores the paradoxical weight of light and lightness through the reactive materiality of mixed media.

Evident in these latest works is the maturation of Watson's artistic process, as her panels reveal renewed confidence and technical mastery of her distinct painterly language. Watson’s works are endlessly evocative of organic forms, populated by familiar figures and rife with art historical reference— at once inviting subjective meaning whilst resisting easy interpretation and the stasis of representation.

Watson's coalescing forms are suspended mid-motion and contain within them an expressive cacophony: marbled, multi-hued brushstrokes are juxtaposed against bold, gestural streaks to maintain precarious equilibrium. Stark ink lines inscribe the pictorial plane of Watson’s panels—disturbing profusions of calligraphic strokes and contrasted with sporadic rushes of pure colour. All punctuated by decisive pastel markings and unfolding on a gradient and richly hued surface, oft delineated by the dynamic introduction of a horizon line. Each piece is a deeply nuanced and profoundly personal undertaking, composed of singular moments of paint and informed by a great depth of feeling, manifested in the application of each individual element.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

JAMIE EVRARD | Restless Spring
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
March 4 - 18, 2017

Jamie Evrard's latest series, Restless Spring shows the artist confidently exploring the potential of her oil medium.Sharp strokes of lively green weave between voluminous blooms, making each panel alive with organic density and painterly lightness. Evrard's reference to flowers at their aesthetic peak is a meditation on the subject of transformation, which is central to the exhibition's theme.  “Life changes, so your paintings change,” says the artist, referring to the evolution of her practice.

Evrard's work is included in collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, Vancouver Art Gallery, Seattle Arts Commission Public Works Collection, Government of BC, Ministry of Culture Art Collection, Burnaby Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Simon Fraser University, Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, University of Victoria, The Claridge Collection, Montreal. Jamie Evrard received a B.A. in Art and Anthropology from Brown University and an M.A. and M.F.A. in studio art with a concentration in printmaking from the University of Iowa.  

JANNA WATSON | Something in the Air
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
February 4 - 25, 2017

There’s something to be said about the simultaneous looseness and order in Janna Watson’s latest paintings. Watson's latest exhibition utilizes paint, pastels and ink to balance shape and colour harmoniously.  Stained panels of loose, gradated paint offer a quiet backdrop for brilliant plumes of colour.  A new lightness emerges within the characteristic abstract marks of Something in the Air.  The distinct half-moon shape of this current body of work appears billowing and free, like clouds separating and reshaping across the sky.  The stark ink lines have graduated from a cross-hatched nets, holding the abstraction within place to become directional lines guiding the viewer's gaze. A dichotomy achieved through playing with differing media within a single composition, Something in the Air activates all of the five bodily senses allowing the viewer to perceive and react to the emotional and rational experiences of the artist.

CASEY MCGLYNN | Domestic Animals

January 21 - Feb 2, 2017
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Nostalgia, poignancy, and the magnificent innocence that characterize Casey McGlynn's style of drawing and mixed media paintings continue into a colourful, multilayered documentation of life. In Domestic Animals, McGlynn integrates his memory and his present family state: paintings include different settings of home, of house, the covers of specific editions of each book that McGlynn has ever read.

Domestic Animals speaks to both exterior and interior domestic landscapes, signifying an anticipation of the future. Varying from his previous works, McGlynn’s Domestic Animals reveals the tension between responsibility, stability, and the child within.