Celia Lees | Eyes Shut

Celia Lees | Eyes Shut
Inaugural Solo Exhibition in Vancouver
September 12-26, 2026
Upper Gallery
3045 Granville Street
Opening reception: Saturday September 12, 2-4 pm | Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present Eyes Shut, the inaugural exhibition in Vancouver by the dynamic emerging Canadian artist Celia Lees.

An intuitive painter, Lees utilizes high abstraction to articulate emotion, interior thought and lived experience through colour, gesture and mark-making. In this new body of work, Lees explores the act of closing one’s eyes as a means of active selectivity, turning away from the barrage of information that infiltrates contemporary daily life, thereby reclaiming interior space. The new works are aptly minimal and make use of an autumnal palette, elegant staining and considered spare marks, exploring how restraint and selective attention can become visual strategies for enabling quieter space, thought and perception.

Lees' work is held in private collections across North America as well as Europe and Asia. It has also been placed in commercial spaces such as 200 Amsterdam in New York, Aria in Las Vegas, and The Laurel in West Palm Beach.

We are thrilled to welcome the Toronto based artist in person at her inaugural Vancouver opening reception on September 12.


Artist statement:

Eyes Shut considers the act of closing one’s eyes not as withdrawal, but as a deliberate position. Created in response to a culture defined by constant visibility and endless information, the works question the assumption that more knowledge leads to greater clarity; there are forms of knowing that overwhelm rather than illuminate, and forms of unknowing that enable space for intuition and inner conviction.

Rather than advocating ignorance, the paintings propose selectivity - an awareness that not every image, opinion, or experience demands our attention. Closing one’s eyes then becomes an act of agency, creating distance from external influence and making room for a quieter way of seeing. These works occupy the space that exists behind closed eyes, a private interior that belongs only to the individual.

They evoke the experience of inhabiting one’s own mind, where memory, emotion, and imagination dissolve into one another, forming an atmospheric landscape that exists beyond physical observation. In this sense, the paintings are less concerned with representing the external world than with giving form to the internal one, a universe that can only be accessed from within.   -Celia Lees, 2026


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