Exhibitions

Drew Burnham | IV Paintings
February 6 – 20, 2021
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto

IV Paintings is a new body of work by acclaimed painter Drew Burnham. The sold-out solo exhibition features four new paintings, celebrating the artist's characteristic use of lush forms, intricate brushstrokes, and sweeping movement. Coveted by art collectors across the country, Burnham's highly recognizable works boldly embody the vitality of the Canadian wilderness.

Janna Watson | Finding Joy
January 9 - 23, 2021
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Finding Joy, on view at Bau-Xi Vancouver from January 9-23, is the latest offering from the celebrated Canadian abstract painter Janna Watson.

Dedicated to and inspired by Joy, the artist’s three-year-old niece, Watson collapses pictorial and physical space to tell visual anecdotes of time spent together: “Hanging on Very Tight” recalls rocking on a toy horse, while “Everything is Spicy” evokes the sensation of eating a raw garden beet, and “Going Where I’m Going” captures the buoyant momentum of a balloon aloft. Throughout this series, Joy’s innocent spirit appears in deconstructed dresses, blonde curls and the back and forth motion of what she calls “lil’ wiggles and woggles.”

The process behind this body of work, and the simple, confetti-like shapes which appear as a recurring motif, spring from a video clip of Joy at play––free-spirited, fun-loving, and proud in a patterned red dress gifted to her by the artist. The related technique of block-colouring, an emerging aesthetic in Watson’s work, is given new emphasis to amplify the intensity of her pigments.

An intentional departure from the invisible “mush” of the subconscious seen in past abstractions, Watson’s new series is an escape from the bouts of seriousness and isolation that punctuate adult life. This new and different headspace is reflected in Watson’s most-recent work, which is playful, spontaneous, and imbued with delight. Bold palettes and emotionally charged gestures remain signatures of Watson’s hand, but the artist channels Joy’s childlike wildness to create fresh expressionist moments that are positively emotive and full of wonder.

“In a time where it’s hard to know what’s right and everything is so complex, I was drawn to the simplicity around Joy,” said Watson. “Sometimes life happens and we forget what it feels like to be free."

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Gallery Artists | Holiday Exhibition 
December 5 - 19, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Bau-Xi Vancouver's annual Holiday Group exhibition features new works by artists Bratsa Bonifacho, Sylvia Tait, Cori Creed, Tom Burrows, Anthony Redpath, Vicki Smith, Nicole Katsuras, Janna Watson and others. 

Darlene Cole | Midnight
December 5-19, 2020
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto

Darlene Cole’s most recent body of work is a reflective magnification of the painting process. While creating this exhibition, the artist experienced a blurred transition from one day to the next, punctuated by a calm intensity falling always at midnight. With a shift in our universal conditions and new realities, the rhythm of the lake, walking in the garden, and dreaming of travel all became flashes of narrative for Cole. These moments are preserved within the canvases as studies of time and memory in a ruminative solo exhibition that grants solace, introspection and connectivity.

Cole's work is extensively collected across Canada and internationally. Notable public collections include: The Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, the K.F. Preueter Collection of Canadian Art, Royal Bank of Canada, CIBC, OCAD University, Fairmont Hotels (Toronto, Montreal, Banff), and Manulife Financial. 

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Andre Petterson | CLIME
November 21 - December 2, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

CLIME, the latest exhibition by Vancouver-based mixed media artist Andre Petterson explores the nature of change through the familiar shorthand of his local environs.

Drawing from imagery of the built environment and natural landscape, Petterson reconceptualizes the relationship between these spaces by displacing and transposing their visual elements. Character homes become resituated atop pebbled beaches and swathes of trees float on the coming tide — a timely and prescient examination of the ways in which we become acclimated to new realities and possible futures. 

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David Alexander | Embedded in the Ideas of Lands
November 7-19, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Renowned Canadian painter David T. Alexander’s latest exhibition, Embedded in the Idea of Lands marks the artist’s return to the coastal landscape, comprising a visual record of the three year period he spent travelling along the gulf islands and north toward Alaska. In this body of work, Alexander traces the footsteps of a former self to enact a personal paleography, an excavation of the painterly language of his past practice.

Through this process, the terrain of the Pacific Northwest becomes activated as a mnemonic device, an entry point to the artist's own lived experience and the locus of collective histories, site-specific narratives, and cultural memory.

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Alex Cameron | Crashing Rocket
November 7-21, 2020
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto

The 40 year career of Alex Cameron has been defined by a celebration of texture and colour, and an unapologetic expression of powerful Canadian wilderness. In his most recent body of work, Crashing Rocket, the artist’s palette is rich and application is controlled, with an impossibly tactile three-dimensionality that is a hallmark of Cameron’s energetic canvases and complex visual lexicon.

The artist's subjects—the varied and animated landscapes of Canada observed during his regular coast to coast travels—are not merely captured or recorded in paint, but rather honoured for their complexity; they are organic, total, and magical environments that live and grow.

Cameron’s paintings have been collected extensively in Canada and abroad. Notable collections include the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Bank of Canada, and The Queen’s Silver Jubilee Art Collection.

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Joseph Plaskett | Home
October 3-17, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to feature Home, a curated exhibition of works by late Canadian painter Joseph Plaskett. Home is a retrospective of what Plaskett affectionately termed his "interiors and their contents", a subject that preoccupied him throughout his career.

From scenes of his Parisian apartment to the gardens of his Suffolk estate and the views from his home in New Westminster, a sense of place has long been central to Plaskett's life and practice. These still-life assemblages often include eclectic objects ranging from his art collection and other prized possessions to humble houseplants and modest vessels.

Beyond the development of his technique and style, Plaskett's devotion to the study of his surroundings speaks to an examination of the self, within the mode of self-portraiture, these paintings of his personal spaces and domestic spheres reveal an intimate likeness.

The artifacts of Plaskett's arrangements, posed in dynamic relation, are rendered with masterful, indulgent simplicity, irreverent treatment of depth, and in lush colour. Here, the richness of Plaskett's hand becomes an exaltation of the everyday — a celebration of the familiar dimensions and simple pleasures of home.

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