Exhibitions

Chase Langford | Geographic Expressionism
June 25 - July 9, 2020
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto

Bau-Xi Toronto is thrilled to present Chase Langford's inaugural Canadian solo exhibition, Geographic Expressionism.

The Californian-based painter invented "geographic expressionism", a distinctive visual language that is grounded in the natural and built environment while embarking into uncharted territory. 

Through cartographic mastery, Langford contorts and synthesizes geographic elements, bringing forth paintings that are mysteriously familiar yet surprisingly unconventional. Challenging conventions of geography and landscapes, the artist offers invigorating visions of space and place that transcend any specific locale, leading us to an exhilarating emotional experience.

Langford’s work is prominently displayed in public, residential, and corporate collections around the globe, including the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Four Seasons in Hong Kong, the Intercontinental Hotel, San Diego, Nordstrom locations worldwide, Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, and The Art Bank, U.S. State Department in Washington, DC, among many others.

Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present a dynamic new body of work by Toronto-based painter, Janna Watson. In a solo exhibition titled Falling Forward, Watson reasserts and expands on her distinctive abstraction and emphatic colour that propelled her into national and global recognition. 
 
"Life unfolds towards the unknown, as intangible forced propel us into the future at an unprecedented rate."

Falling Forward was completed in 2020, before "shit hit the fan", and yet still feels appropriate. 

This new body of work by Canadian painter, Janna Watson, articulates the subconscious energy afoot, that draws awareness to an invisible creator and shares in this moment, making visible the things that create movement in life. 
 
Invisible forces have always directed us, and in more ways than we realize: wind steers us, gravity grounds us, friction moves us forward, currents can pull us under and now a virus has taken us to our inner spaces. 
 
Inward is a familiar landing place for Watson, where she finds the force to transform objects and colours, in order to reflect on new futures. 
 
“The ghostly, silent virus is pulling the world inside out,” she explains. “The inevitable sublime that is creating, and re-creating life and time, moment by moment, cannot be stopped. 

"Things just can't help but become themselves."

Falling Forward will be released at Bau-Xi Gallery Toronto in June 2020. Please contact us at 416-977-0600 and toronto@bau-xi.com for enquires and acquisitions. 

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Since 1965, Bau-Xi Gallery has functioned as a meeting place where we have gathered to form a vibrant community with a shared belief in the importance and soul-sustaining function of art.

As we witness the distressing effects of Covid-19 and its impact on our larger communities in Toronto and Vancouver, we feel the need to act now and help where it is most needed.

In an effort to give back and support the cities that we have called home for over 50 years, we are launching our online exhibition, ART CARES.

This charitable exhibition will feature select paintings, works on paper, and photographs by gallery artists from May 12th to May 31st. 100% of our proceeds will be donated to Food Banks Canada. 

As essential organizations, food banks continue to support food insecure Canadians. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, they have been met with uncertainty, seeing a loss in financial support and support staff, and an increase in demand. Food Banks Canada has been supporting provincial food bank networks through their coronavirus response efforts, securing food, finances, and volunteers. 

Over $200,000 CAD in artwork has been donated by over 40 Bau-Xi Gallery artists. ART CARES showcases selected artwork located at both Toronto and Vancouver Bau-Xi Gallery locations and can be viewed online.

We salute our artists for their caring and generosity, making this exhibition possible.

Please help us in our effort to support food insecure Canadians in this unprecedented time.

AWAKENINGS | Group Exhibition
May 9 - 23, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

In the midst of these difficult times, artists continue to create inspired works in the solitude of their studios.

Bursts of Spring-like colour in Nicole Katsuras’ and Eric Louie’s new paintings are contrasted with the more sombre notes of warning underlying Andre Petterson’s new mixed media works.

The bold and intricate geometric forms in Bonifacho’s oil and acrylic paintings are a foil for the delicate nuanced watercolour works on paper by Vicky Christou.

New works by gallery artists as they arrive will continue to be exhibited in the gallery and online on the New Arrivals page.

Please contact Bau-Xi Vancouver at 604-733-7011 or info@bau-xi.com for additional images or to schedule a private viewing appointment at the gallery.

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Michael Kenna | Japan
May 1-31, 2020
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto

This May, Bau-Xi Photo presents Japan, a suite of photographic works by acclaimed British photographer, Michael Kenna. By using regional atmospheric elements–such as mist, fog, rain, and snow–and long exposures, Kenna simplifies the landscape into its most basic form. These images are akin to a haiku, capturing the natural juxtapositions of the landscape with his minimalist approach. Kenna has a way of bringing a calm centeredness to these moments of time in nature. He becomes a portrait photographer, capturing the intimacy between himself and the landscape.

Over the course of his career, Michael Kenna (b. 1953. Widnes, Lancashire, England) has become a prominent figure in contemporary photography, leaving his mark in the minimalist movement since the late 1970s. He has mounted over four-hundred and fifty solo exhibitions and has work included in more than a hundred permanent collections. These include but are not limited to: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.

Michael’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. His intimate silver-gelatin prints are still hand-made, reflect a sense of refinement, his appreciation of photographic history, and have become a trademark of his artistic approach. He currently resides in Seattle, WA.

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Left: Two Winter Stocks, Biei, Hokkaido
Right: Snow on Pebbles, Toya Lake, Hokkaido

Left: Sand Mounds, Kamigamojinja, Kyoto
Right: Torii Gate, Study 3, Shosanbetsu, Hokkaido

Left: Clouds, Fence and Snow, Nakafurano, Hokkaido
Right: Temple Pond, Sanboh-in, Koyasan

Michelle Nguyen | Predation
April 16-30, 2020
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto

This April, Bau-Xi Gallery is excited to present Michelle Nguyen's Predation. Nguyen expands upon her inspiration for the exhibition in the artist statement below: 

 "This particular body of work explores the challenges of hybrid identity and cultural dysphoria through the utilization of representational binaries such as living and dead, inanimate and organic, beast and human, meat and animal, male and female, dark and light, wild and domestic, and predator and prey. These cacophonic tableaus blend the narratives of magic realist literature and Greco-Roman mythology while serving as the setting for a colourful cast of vaguely humanoid creatures in various stages of metamorphosis. The enigmatic nature of these fabricated worlds allows these hybrid characters to occupy multitude of dichotomies at once. (Is this a woman transforming into a swan, a swan transforming into a woman, or something different altogether?) Predation questions false ideas of purity and what it means to occupy identities that exist in limbo."

- Michelle Nguyen 

Born in Toronto, Nguyen currently lives and works in Vancouver. She studied Environmental Design and received her undergraduate degree from the University of British Columbia in 2016.

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Jamie Evrard | On Reflection
March 7 - 21, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7, 2-4 pm, Artist in Attendance

Acclaimed painter Jamie Evrard's latest exhibition, On Reflection will debut a new series of water studies and features new floral paintings.

Transposed onto new subject matter, Evrard's process takes on an inspired approach as the artist's gestural mark-making expands to capture and elaborate on the open space, lush depths and nuanced qualities of light at play within her source imagery.

Evrards' commitment to her motifs speaks to a profound determination to explore the properties of the oil medium. Whether exercised on arrangements in full bloom or undulating watery expanses, the artist's keen attention to surface texture, skillful accents and layered transparencies create rich, visually compelling compositions of immersive scale and startling immediacy.

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Janna Watson | Dragging A Thought Over
February 8 - 22, 2020
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 8, 2-4 pm, Artist in Attendance

Toronto-based abstract painter Janna Watson's latest body of work, featured in her upcoming exhibition Dragging A Thought Over explores what the artist describes as her struggle to "drag a thought over from the mush of the unconscious into some kind of human sense." 

This approach has engendered a highly articulate physicality in Watson's mixed media practice, one readily apparent in the surety of the artist's hand and the dynamism of her ever-broader strokes, marks of the indisputable maturation of a singular talent.

Watson's emotionally charged process echo the confluence of materials at play on the picture surface, taking shape in her complex arrangements of eloquent gestures, which urgently move towards a dramatic visual resolution.

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