Exhibitions

Katrin Korfmann and Jens Pfeifer | BACK STAGES 
A Featured Exhibition for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival

May 1-31, 2019
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto 
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 4th, 2-4pm.

Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present Back Stages, a new photographic series created by fine art photographer Katrin Korfmann and sculptor Jens Pfeifer. Back Stages documents the underappreciated world of manufacturing that is nonetheless essential to the making of artworks and culturally important objects.

Fascinated by the facilities where fine art and culturally important objects are created, the artists traveled the world over three years capturing scenes such as a bronze foundry in the Netherlands, a stainless-steel workshop in China, an archeological excavation site in Turkey, and a functioning 11th century tannery in Morocco. By foregrounding these facilities, Korfmann and Pfeifer draw attention away from the romantic notion of a solitary artist in their studio and shift it to a broader network of labour. Every step of the artistic process, from planning to execution, is wrought with artistic meaning, and is integral to the final piece of art. Back Stages emphasizes the significance of manufacturing and materials in the world of art and culture.

Back Stages was selected as a Featured Exhibition for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and will be on view at our photography location for the entire month of May. 

Katrin Korfmann is an Amsterdam-based photographic artist, known for her large-scale aerial images examining human interaction in public spaces. Jens Pfeifer bases his artistic practice out of Amsterdam; he is a visual artist working mainly in sculpture, whose work explores how human beings deeply identify with images of the natural world.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COLLECTION

Alex Cameron | Big Dipper, Polaris North
April 6-20, 2019
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6, 2-4 pm. Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Toronto is pleased to present Big Dipper, Polaris North, a dynamic body of work by renowned Toronto-based artist, Alex Cameron.

In his latest series, Cameron continues his exploration of the night sky in a distinctive style that has defined his work for over 40 years. His thick, painterly application lends lively sculptural form to the energetic landscapes he creates. Not only bold and bright, Cameron’s colours are unconventional, inverted, and built up in linear “ropes” of paint, often applied straight from the tube, that make his surfaces hum with life.

Cameron was introduced to New York City’s Abstract Expressionist movement in the 1960s. He witnessed concurrent and equally powerful experiments in abstraction back home in Toronto, where he worked as a studio assistant for the late Jack Bush in the mid-1970s. Cameron's subjects—the varied 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.
 
Alex 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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Anthony Redpath | SUBLIMATION
April 4-20
3045 Granvile Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 4, 6-9 pm. Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present SUBLIMATION, a body of work by Vancouver-based photographer Anthony Redpath. Following his acclaimed RE-FINED series, the artist further explores the industrial edifice of the west coast and visually mines a landscape rooted in its industrial history.
 
Redpath positions his lens at close range, then crops and recomposes his subjects in post-production, distilling them into a series of abstracted planes of form and texture. Select works in SUBLIMATION demonstrate a new direction for Redpath. His overpainted photographs emphasize the inherent texture of aged industrial surfaces through the physical edges of oil paint, which has been scraped and dragged along the surface. Material boundaries between photographic subject, print and paint are obscured, hinting at the many layered material processes that are concealed by Redpath’s monumental walled structures.

Redpath draws influence most notably from Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typologies, Andreas Gursky’s meticulously detailed images of modernity and the rich textural detail of Gerhard Richter’s scraped paintings. Captivating to the viewer from a distance, Redpath’s compositions, upon closer inspection, conjure themes of perception, industry, socio-politics and the environment.

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Virginia Mak | Composed
April 6-20, 2019
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto 
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 6, 2019, 2-4 PM. Artist in attendance. 

This April, Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present Composed, a new series by Toronto-based photographer Virginia Mak.  In this latest body of work, Mak is interested in capturing the creative spirit in visual form. In Composed, Mak’s signature soft-focus solitary figures reveal themselves through a veil of superimposed hand-painted motifs, alluding to a certain artistic sensibility. The resulting image shifts from portrait to poetic character study. The delicate process pushes the medium of photography beyond its conventional limits, marrying the photographic surface and experimental, painterly effect.

Virginia Mak was born in Hong Kong. After graduating with a Philosophy Degree from the University of Calgary, she studied Photography at the Ontario College of Art. Mak's photographs can be found in public and private collections in North America and Hong Kong.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COLLECTION

 

 

Jeffrey Milstein | AERIALS
March 9-23, 2019
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto 
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 9, 2019, 2-4 PM

This March, Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by acclaimed American photographer Jeffrey Milstein. The show will feature the latest works in his ongoing series, AERIALS. Shot from a helicopter, these meticulously composed and highly detailed images offer a unique view of iconic sites such as the Palace of Versailles and the Empire State Building. 

Join us on Saturday, March 9 from 2-4pm to celebrate the exhibition opening. 

Jeffrey Milstein is an acclaimed American photographer who has won numerous awards for his aircraft photography and mesmerizing aerial landscapes. His photographs have been published in Men’s Vogue, TIME Magazine, European Photography, American Photo, Eyemazing, Die Zeit, Wired, PDN, Esquire and Conde Nast Portfolio. His acclaimed series “Aircraft: The Jet as Art” was exhibited in a year-long solo show at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC from November 2011 – November 2012. Born in Los Angeles, where he frequently returns to shoot at the International Airport, Milstein makes his home in Woodstock, NY.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COLLECTION 

Gallery Artists | Mixed Media 
February 9 – 23, 2019
340 & 350 Dundas Street West, Toronto 

This February, we are excited to present ‘Mixed Media,’ a group exhibition celebrating and highlighting the artistic conversations that occur when painting and photography are featured in the same space. The exhibition will span both of our locations on Dundas Street West, and will include a curated selection of work by Barbara Cole, Janna Watson, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, Kathryn Macnaughton, and Robert Marchessault, amongst many others.

Image details:
Left: Barbara Cole, Underpainting. Right: Kathryn Macnaughton, Fluid. 

Ted Fullerton | Prima Materia
February 9 – 23, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9, 2-4 pm. Artist in Attendance.

Rich with symbolism, Ted Fullerton’s work investigates the duality of human nature; the rational and the illogical, the physical and the spiritual, the intellectual and the intuitive. The paintings, sculptures, and stone lithographs in Prima Materia highlight this dichotomy with references to folklore, psychology, philosophy, art history, classical mythology and allegory, while holding contemporary connotations.

The concept of Prima Materia refers to the prima material or first matter; the primitive formless base of all substance. Exploring this idea, the artist’s pictorial and sculptural language illustrates and reinforces a collective memory, as well as human “duality,” within a contemporary perspective – in the words of the artist – “by turning the gaze inward as mirror and metaphor.”

 

Image Details:

Top: Ted Fullerton, Gukumatz and the 3 Sisters, Oil on Wood with Masonite Panel, 48 X 84 in. Left: Nietzsche and Me, Stone Lithograph, 22 X 30 in. Right: Newton's Theory, Cast Resin, Bronze Powder, Steel, 15 X 9 X 15 in.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE WORK BY TED FULLERTON

Janna Watson | Suspended in Time
February 9 – 23, 2019
3045 Granville Street
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 9, Artist in Attendance

Suspended in Time is a new body of work by acclaimed painter Janna Watson. The exhibition is inspired by the artist’s late grandfather Arthur Bonnet, a seasoned artist who turned away from landscape painting in the 1940s and moved towards abstraction after studying at Pratt Institute in New York as Expressionism was making its way to Canada.

The legacy of Arthur Bonnet is present throughout Suspended in Time. From early painting lessons to exciting trips to the art supply store, Arthur was a pivotal influence on the artist throughout her artistic career. Over the years, Janna has incorporated lighter washes of paint across wood panel, preferring the birch wood surface to canvas for its ability to absorb paint like watercolour paper.  As Arthur taught Janna the fundamentals of painting, he also urged her to develop her own voice and encouraged her to paint wildly. “I love things harmoniously ugly", Arthur would declare. This sentiment now largely informs Janna’s choice of colour, line and stroke as she lays down each bold, intuitive mark, delicately suspended in time and space. The artist explains, “When I feel a painting is nearly complete, I like to use oil stick and ink as the final step to help ground the work. It’s a personal reminder to paint wilder! These scribbles are my exclamation marks that finish each sentence”.

Suspended in Time is Watson’s ode to the late Arthur Bonnet, a suite of paintings created with painterly fervour in honour of the hundredth anniversary of Arthur’s life.

 

VIEW THE JANNA WATSON COLLECTION