Exhibitions

Robert Marchessault | Solace
October 3-17, 2020
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto, ON, M5T 1G5

This October, Bau-Xi Gallery Toronto is pleased to present Solace, a new exhibition by well-established Canadian painter, Robert Marchessault. Derived from memory, and based on observation and a range of experiences, this body of work is an extension of the artist’s “quiet times in 2020”. Marchessault continues to explore his fascination with trees, and their ability to respond and adapt to the condition of their environments while maintaining life and resilience.

“Solace is a group of new paintings of trees, solo or groups or in a landscape.  They offer me comfort or consolation in a time of distress.  All the paintings have been created in my studio since the COVID crisis began. This show can be seen as an extension of my quiet times in 2020. The images are created from my imagination, but based on observation and a range of experiences.  I watch trees as they grow and change over time. I am interested in how they respond to the conditions they live through. Having planted and nurtured many trees, I feel as if there is a sympathetic communication with them. Sometimes no matter how I try to help, they do not survive. They can also make time speed up as they reach for the sky; suddenly I look and think, "how did you get so tall so fast?". The most fascinating to me are trees that maintain life while struggling. There is an exquisite beauty in their twists and shapes. Trees have the ability to make us stop what we are doing for a moment or longer.  We can be blessed with a shift in perspective. The Navajo people sometimes describe it as Nizhoni, which means just existing in beauty.”

     - Robert Marchessault  2020

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Chris Shepherd | Prophecies 
September 12 - 26, 2020 
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present a selection of new photographs by Toronto-based photographer, Chris Shepherd. Walking city streets for consecutive hours, Shepherd captures the mundane, ordinary, and passed-over with a sense of isolation. In Prophecies, Shepherd photographs the beauty of everyday objects and architecture as they stand still during this unexpected reality.

Shepherd’s work has been exhibited across North America and is included in major corporate collections in Canada. Most recently a number of his works were acquired by the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. 

"The signs are all around us. Never explicitly pointing, never overtly positive or negative. It’s not all doom and destruction or love and laughter, because nothing is ever that simple. Harbingers speak, and those interested interpret. Visions don’t care whether we crave them or cower in fear from them. Portents aren’t reserved exclusively for seers and they don’t always get delivered to those who can read them.  And who really wants to know the unknowable future anyway?

To foretell what might happen requires reflection on the past and an understanding of the present. As a result, the future predicted will be a mirror of our yesterdays and todays. It’s all very confusing.

Prophecies are there for us to read and use, or to pass by and ignore.

The choice is ours."  - Chris Shepherd

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Vicky Christou | Continuum
September 9 - 22, 2020
3045 Granville St, Vancouver

Vicky Christou’s new body of work, titled Continuum, the artist's work with the post-modernist form of the grid explores visual themes of infinity and domestic crafts.

This motif – her commitment to which has become a performative record of her mark-making and painting history – has become an integral platform for her personal visual metaphors; a structured framework in which architectural silhouettes are entwined with spontaneous brushwork, the order and rhythmic patterns of which echoes visually to create the illusion of a woven image.  
Working on a larger scale, these bas-relief sculptural compositions adopt a newfound physicality, unfolding into spaces through which the viewer is able to glimpse partially hidden interiors made of light washes of subtle colour. 

The application of the overlayed grid is at once a protective cloak and a formal pattern that defines and secures the impasto lines of paint. The tension between this held enclosure is at once limiting and liberating in its repetitive, continuous patterning – duality ad infinitum.

Christou invites the viewer through the portal of her paint surface into an illusory environment of rich interiority, contemplative stillness, and vast depth, one with no beginning or end; within the shifting subtleties of Christou's grid complex dwells a profound and resonant sublime.

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Eric Louie | Finding A Way
September 9 - 22, 2020
3045 Granville St, Vancouver

Vancouver-based painter Eric Louie’s latest exhibition, Finding A Way, introduces a new series of intimate small-scale works that explore ideas of symbolism and semiotics while delving deeper into a new format for his ongoing consideration of imagined spaces.

In his large-scale canvasses, the artist’s distinct future-forward aesthetic and formalist sensibility emerges from his precariously balanced assemblages —  charged with dynamic tension, and rife with colourful shapes — they are at once subject to and defiant of visual gravity. The rich interplay of Louie's forms, shaded with brightly-hued gradients and accented with chrome-like effects, appears both static and in perpetual motion, synthetic-looking yet singularly organic.

With an expanding painterly vernacular inspired by revisiting past works spanning the duration of his practice, Louie's use of symmetry and canonical forms communicate subconscious associations. Ever-present semblances of the familiar, figments of still-lifes, traces of figures and approximations of landscapes emerge from Louie’s evocative compositions, resisting interpretation and beckoning the viewer into the richly layered virtual worlds of his paintings.

Sheila Kernan | This Moment Right Now
August 8 – 22
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

This Moment Right Now, Calgary-based artist Sheila Kernan's first major exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver is a timely engagement with the past and present. 

In this new body of work, Kernan skillfully weaves canonical images and personal narratives, drawing references from the stylized illustrations of classic animation and original photographs to render the boundaries between truth and fiction indiscernible.

Known for her intensely saturated palette and tactile surfaces, Kernan's meticulously composed images begin with large-scale drawings and comprise layered mixed-media elements and gestural impasto.
 
Mediated by the artist's lived experience, distinct sensibility, and richly complex process, Kernan's re-imagining of the Canadian landscape informed by our collective conception of the genre and its source imagery, taking on new and richer depths of meaning with the act of viewing. 

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Michael Kenna | July Feature
July 11-25, 2020
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto

This July, we are thrilled to showcase acclaimed English photographer Michael Kenna’s work at our 340 Dundas Street W location. Kenna’s career spans across four decades, over four-hundred and fifty solo exhibitions and has work included in over a hundred permanent collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Kenna's signature style is attributed to his long-time exposures – mainly taken at dawn or in the dark hours of the night – which capture the interactions between the natural landscape and human-made structures. The artist's intimate silver-gelatin prints are still hand-processed, and reflect a sense of refinement, demonstrating his appreciation of photographic history that has become a trademark of his artistic approach.

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Joshua Jensen-Nagle| Endless Summer II
July 4-16, 2020
3045 Granville St, Vancouver

Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Canadian photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle in his return to his acclaimed Endless Summer series. Featuring photographs of the Mexican Riviera, Western Australia, and the Great Lakes Region, Jensen-Nagle continues to­­ capture aerial images of sunbathed figures set against sublime natural backdrops.

Jensen-Nagle’s bird’s-eye view and immersive, large-scale format disturb one’s sense of depth and perspective to abstract these familiar sites; 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 his 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 shifting interstice, Jensen-Nagle examines the ways in which humanity inhabits these far-flung environs; ruminating upon the nature and evolution of leisure and its place in the breakneck pace of our everyday lives.

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David Leventi | Social Spaces
June 25 - July 9, 2020
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present a thematic selection of photographs by New York-based photographer, David Leventi. This exhibition explores social spaces, both past and present, featuring photographs of restaurants from the artist’s New York series, and works from his acclaimed series, Palazzi.

Working with 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 inch Arca-Swiss cameras, Leventi captures his architectural subjects in perfect detail. Moreover, his photographs exhibit a masterful sensibility of lighting and composition.

Leventi's photography is included in prestigious private and public collections including The Sir Elton John Collection and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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