BARBARA COLE CAPTURES LE PETIT PRINCE

Last summer, Barbara Cole was tasked with capturing the magic of Le Petit Prince in the way she knows best: through her underwater camera lens. To express in an image the enduring charm of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s universally adored novella—a seeming impossibility—was for the Toronto artist a challenge met with energy and enthusiasm. Alongside the celebrated set and costume designer Michael Levine, dancer and choreographer Guillaume Côté, and with principal dancers Tanya Howard and Dylan Tedaldi, Cole plunged underwater to create images characteristic of her signature, ethereal photographic style. Dancers glided, dived, dipped and floated up through their water stage, finding their characters through explorative movement. The shoot quickly became an exercise in letting go--of the predictable physics so essential to dance, of ordinary orientation and perspective, of reality itself as it gave way to the dreamy, gravity-defying world of Le Petit Prince. More information: National Ballet of Canada website

FALLING THROUGH TIME opens June 11th
Just as Le Petit Prince opens to audiences in Toronto this June, Barbara Cole’s exhibition Falling Through Time debuts at Bau-Xi Photo. This exhibition of new work is best described as a resurfacing—Barbara Cole collaborates with a past self by combining a 20 year old Polaroid series of English gardens as a backdrop to the artist’s captivating underwater portraits. Falling Through Time poetically re-arranges past and present by drawing on personal and collective history, myth, and the porous nature of time in the distinct, contemporary style for which the artist has become known.

Please join the artist at an opening reception on Saturday, June 11th from 2-4pm to see Falling Through Time in person. For artwork inquiries, please email info@bau-xiphoto.com. Exhibition runs June 11 - 25, 2016.