Exhibitions

Eric Louie | Emergence
January 11 - 25, 2020
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 11th, 4-5 pm, Artist in Attendance

Vancouver-based painter Eric Louie’s solo exhibition Emergence, at Bau-Xi Toronto, focuses on his ongoing exploration of the interplay of forms in states of transition.

The artist’s distinct future-forward aesthetic and formalist sensibility informs the richly layered virtual worlds of his paintings—rife with colourful shapes, shaded with brightly-hued gradients and accented with chrome-like effects to reinforce a palpable materiality. Louie's forms are at once static and in perpetual motion, synthetic-looking yet singularly organic, imbuing the flatness of the two-dimensional surface with emphatic dimensionality.

These precariously balanced assemblages are charged with dynamic tension and visual potential — evidence of the artist's deft hand as he skillfully manipulates the quality of light and spatial depth within his canvasses to enthralling effect. Ever-present semblances of the familiar, figments of still-lifes, traces of figures and approximations of landscapes emerge from Louie’s evocative compositions as they resist interpretation and beckon the viewer towards abstraction.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

SOLO EXHIBITION: Entwine
December 7-21, 2019
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto
Opening Reception & Book Launch: Saturday, December 7, 2019, 2-4 PM, Artist in Attendance 

Bau-Xi Gallery is thrilled to be celebrating 20 years of representing Canadian painter Darlene Cole. To mark this significant occasion, we invite all of Cole’s admirers and collectors to join us in the gallery on Saturday December 7^th from 2-4pm, for a special anniversary book launch and the unveiling of the artist’s newest solo exhibition, Entwine.

Entwine will see beloved past characters and archetypes placed in Cole’s signature interior and nature scenes, presented with an invigorating magnification of emotion.

Darlene 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.

VIEW FULL COLLECTION

PURCHASE DARLENE COLE BOOK 

Sylvia Tait | Variations on A Theme
November 9 - 23, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 9, 2019, 2-4 PM

Bau-Xi Toronto is pleased to present Variations on a Theme, a selection of new works by acclaimed West Coast painter Sylvia Tait. Tait’s latest series is the celebration of a new approach, one which emerged following her recent retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery, during which the artist revisited earlier drawing and mixed media works.

Tait's varied techniques reference the jazz improvisations and classical music pieces which accompany her in the studio. With a particular focus on the visual resonance of her puzzle-like compositions, the organic tactility of the artist's experienced hand can be seen in the deliberately worked nearly agitated surfaces of her paintings.

Distinguished by soft-edged forms oft-disrupted by fragmented passages and painterly "trackings", the patina-ed blocks of colour that comprise Tait's canvasses and paperworks gradually reveal the subtle reverberations of their underlying layers, making apparent the optical play within the depths of her arrangements.

Sylvia Tait is an established Canadian painter who has been represented by the Bau-Xi Gallery since 1977. Tait's artworks have been acquired by many private and public collections, including the Musée de l'Art Contemporaine, Quebec; Vancouver Art Gallery, BC; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba; the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; the West Vancouver Museum, the Burnaby Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

Andre Petterson | Balance
October 19 - November 2, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 2019, 2-4 PM

Balance, Vancouver-based artist Andre Petterson's latest exhibition, is a reflective exploration of the precarious tensions and constant flux at play within the built environment of his surrounding urban landscape, which the artist has observed and bore witness to since his arrival from Saskatoon in 1970.

Central to this series is a body of monolithic found objects: cranes, high-rises, mountains of sulphur, the sculptural qualities of which hearken to the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. This subject matter becomes mediated by Petterson's mixed media methodology, the collage and photo-manipulation elements of which echo similar processes of deconstruction, assemblage and enhancement reiterated in real estate advertising imagery, the physical transformation of the built environment, and in the composite character of the city itself.

In contrast to Petterson's visual metonymies for industry and development,  the negatives spaces of his compositions and the figures that disrupt them enact a forceful allegory of our fraught environs. The presence of these stand-ins reinforce the open-ended nature of Petterson's work, allowing for it to be read in myriad ways. As these figures face away from the viewer, they recall the aesthetic lineage of our recent past and beckon the viewer to bear witness to the precarious balance of the present moment.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

Tom  Burrows | The Curve of Time
October 5-19, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto - Upper Floor Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto is pleased to present the continuation of The Curve of Time, an exhibition of work by renowned Canadian artist Tom Burrows. For the last 30 years, Burrows has been committed to exploring the medium of cast pigment polymer resin focusing on colour fields. The panels included in this exhibition recall and reflect the geography of a coast peopled for untold millennia in the curve of time.

The Curve of Time borrows its name from the eponymous memoir of M. W. Blanchet. Following the disappearance of her husband, Blanchet and her children lived aboard a vessel to allow for the summer rental of the family’s onshore home. Blanchet's travel log commences in 1926 and recounts the fifteen summers she spent cruising the British Columbia coast in a small gasoline-powered launch with her five children.

Blanchet’s The Curve of Time served as a catalyst for Burrows, whose eight-meter boat, Caprice spurred the artist to acquire his own vessel which he fondly named Gina Marie. The artist's journey under the sail of Gina Marie culminates in a lucid picture of life afloat complex tidal waters.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

David T. Alexander | Landscape Considerations and Imagined Dialogues
October 5-19, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto - Main Floor Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Throughout his fifty-year career, David Alexander has created powerful works depicting the Canadian landscape, as well as abstracted water reflections bursting with intensity and drama. His varied subjects are portrayed through the use of unconventional washes, gestural brushstrokes, and carefully placed scrapes. The final paintings are imbued with an energetic originality and authenticity.

The paintings in this show illustrate Alexander’s continued fascination with craggy, rough, shadowed wilderness. Peculiar trees stand like twisted scarecrows; impassible thickets seem full of mystery and intrigue, and pools of water mirror the sky and trees beyond view and invite us to look deeper.

David Alexander is deeply motivated by landscape. “Wandering” through the land is intrinsic to his process and allows him to thoroughly experience the place he is exploring. While wandering, Alexander takes photographs and creates sketches to document his trips, which develops an even deeper understanding of the land. Coupled with his personal engagement with the location, this documentation serves to capture the feeling of a place as opposed to helping aid a literal translation of the landscape.

Returning to this immersive experience several times – sometimes after many years – allows Alexander to witness the effect a different perspective, changing light, as well as human and environmental impact, can have on the land. This deep knowledge of the landscape is successfully conveyed in his paintings. The nature of Alexander’s line and brushstroke application invites the viewer to look closely to examine the scene thoroughly. We are given the opportunity to absorb the artist’s impression of the land, and also carefully explore the scene ourselves.

As an audience, we experience a David Alexander painting as if we are being told a story – a combination of narrative and record. This story is revealed to the viewer as their eyes journey around the painting’s surface, guided by Alexander’s distinctive and uniquely recognizable strokes.

Through exploration and intimate study, Alexander’s lyrical work transcends the specificity of location and manifests as something new and entirely his own. Part refinement, part embellishment, the interactions occurring in his paintings make them an event rather than strictly a landscape. The final pieces in this collection beautifully express the drama of the subject Alexander explored.

VIEW THE COLLECTION

Sheri Bakes | Empathy for the Earth
September 14-28, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 2019, 2-4 PM