News

Bau-Xi Gallery was established by Paul Huang in 1965 in Vancouver, to showcase the many Canadian artists in need of gallery representation on the West Coast. As the oldest commercial gallery in Vancouver, Bau-Xi is a founding member the  South Granville Gallery Association, and a member of the Art Dealers Association of Canada since the early 1970s.

Since its inception, the iconic Vancouver Bau-Xi Gallery has expanded to include Bau-Xi Gallery and Bau-Xi Photo in Toronto, and Foster/White Gallery in Seattle. Over the past 50 years, Bau-Xi Gallery has been recognized as one of Canada’s most highly regarded art galleries, with a reputation founded on adherence to the highest standards in quality of art and service to clients.

Today, the Bau-Xi group of galleries represents emerging and established visual artists across a variety of media and genres and remains committed to excellence in the promotion of exceptional contemporary fine art.

2. Is this a conscious choice to paint only women?

The work is a journey of trying to express something that is abstract, and that expression takes the shape that is most familiar to me.

3. What do you want viewers to feel when they look at one of your paintings?

Peace. The swimmers are a meditation. An invitation to peace; a space to enter into and leave the busyness of the day behind. As the body stills so too does the mind, surrendering to the real-time flow of moment to moment. I think that initially the viewer relates to the remembered experience of swimming, but I hope that ultimately it’s a deeper sense of peace that resonates.

4. How do your compositions begin?

I start with a photo shoot for reference.  I scatter the prints on the studio floor, and live with them for some time. Eventually a few images will resonate with me.

I begin a painting with a pencil drawing. I use the photo for some initial colour and detail reference, but eventually I put it aside, try to get out of my own way, and just let the painting develop. A lot of the work is sheer chance. I try to clear my mind and just let it happen.

5. What part of the process is most enjoyable to you?

The start of something new, the beginnings! There is such excitement and potential in the initial inspiration, that wordless concept that I can’t quite put my finger on because it’s just emerging. The most joy comes from the drawing. That’s the part where I start to coax a feeling into reality. I love that the drawing will ultimately be a secret hidden under layers of paint. The rest of the process is an all-consuming, ebb and flow of frustrations and hallelujahs.

6. How do you feel when a completed painting leaves your studio?

When a painting leaves the studio it stops being about me, and becomes a space for other people to enter into. If the work allows another person to connect to a familiar feeling, a sense of time or place, a wordless moment, then I am very grateful.

 View this 30 second video to hear more about her practice

BROWSE AVAILABLE WORK BY VICKI SMITH HERE

Contact us to receive a message when Smith's next painting arrives

BAU-XI PHOTO  |  JULY 9-23, 2016

Bau-Xi Photo (Toronto) presents a group exhibition with a focus on Paris Rooftops, the latest series by internationally acclaimed photographer Michael Wolf. Known for his studies of dense urban landscapes, Wolf’s newest work captures the countless rooftops of historical buildings in Paris. In his signature approach of removing any reference to the ground or horizon, Wolf flattens each image to present abstracted views of the iconic city. 
 
German-born and educated in the United States and Europe, Michael Wolf now lives and works in Hong Kong. His work has been exhibited internationally and can be found in prominent collections such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The San Jose Museum of Art, California; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and The Brooklyn Museum, New York.

VIEW MICHAEL WOLF ARTWORK HERE

Photo by Nathalia Allen

June 30th, 2016: Q&A with Toronto artist Kathryn MacNaughton, by Bau-Xi Toronto Co-Director Alissa Sexton

1. Where do you draw inspiration for your paintings?

Everyday experiences. I can be inspired by the colour of a brick wall next to a lamp post or the roof of a building next to a blue sky. I find myself getting inspired in the most obvious, yet obscure places.   

2. How do you begin a painting, with colour or composition?

 I like to change it up. It’s nice to start with a colour palette because it’s usually the component that creates a certain feeling/mood, but sometimes I have a compositional idea first so I’ll try to rough out the idea in black and white and then add colour.

3. Which do you feel is most important in your paintings, colour or composition?

Both are just as important, but if I had to choose one, colour. It’s the part that creates the connection between myself and the art. It conjures up feelings, memories, emotions and I think the composition helps support that.

4. How much time do you devote to planning the painting versus actually painting it?

I do like to spend some time experimenting in between producing the work. It always inspires me and gets me motivated to try out some new ideas. Then I’ll mockup something up and try to stick to it, but it’s always a journey that can become a completely different vision then I expected. 

5. Do you prefer the composition planning stage, or the painting stage?

I like both for different reasons. The planning stage is where the initial ideas start to take form. It feels like a puzzle you’re trying to solve. The painting stage is where things become unpredictable and you start discovering new ideas. I love both. Organized thoughts, then unpredictable chaos. 

6. How does it feel when a completed piece leaves your studio?

Really great. I never let anything leave my studio that I’m not happy with.  

7. You’ve recently collaborated with Style Garage to create a chair – how did that experience inform your practice?

 It was amazing. I’ve been wanting to work on different surfaces and this was the perfect opportunity. It was just an experiment that will hopefully lead to me working on more furniture. I’m very inspired by interior design. I think it’s a really important part of my work. I always think about the environment in which my paintings can live in.  

8. What would you like people to feel (experience, visualize, etc) when they look at your work?

I hope something romantic. There is a lot of lust and sexual tension in the paintings.

VIEW KATHRYN MACNAUGHTON'S LATEST PAINTINGS HERE

Left: William Lazos, Bubble Blower, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
Right: Chris Temple, One Way, oil on canvas, 60 x 45 inches

This July, Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto will be exhibiting artwork that celebrates contemporary realism. Three gallery artists will be exhibiting new work in a variety of media, sizes and formats – each interpreting this theme in varied ways. Artists included will demonstrate not just technical skill with, but also the unique ways in which paint contributes to figuration.

Shaun Downey's realist style masterfully bridges traditional portraiture and the contemporary. Jenna Opsahl of Jungle Magazine (London, UK) states: "His scenes are mysterious and unknowable - and yet they feel familiar; as if we ourselves, have been here before." This exhibition closely follows Downey’s inclusion in the public installation Keeping It Real, on at Station Gallery, Whitby, this June and July. 

William Lazos' painted surfaces are technically precise and smoothly rendered, using a combination of meticulous airbrush and paintbrush techniques to capture subtle plays of light and complex textural surfaces. His subjects - carnival scenes and other contemporary cultural objects - call on all the senses in their striking detail. Lazos' paintings combine haze and sharp focus, document and memory, hyper-realism and childlike wonder to mesmerizing effect.

Chris Temple has been capturing the complexity and sublimity of Canada's urban environments for over 30 years. His technically precise paintings render the cityscape as something both strong and delicate, familiar yet mysterious, and always reverant of contemporary landscape as an endless source of visual interest. Chris Temple has exhibited extensively across Canada, and is featured in prominent collections and institutions.

CLICK ARTIST NAMES ABOVE TO PREVIEW ARTWORK FOR THIS EXHIBITION

Cole’s project began 20 years ago, when, while traveling, the artist became enamored with the incomparable gardens of England. She was inspired by their romantic ambiance: whimsical lattices, wiry brambles, and lush roses, all overseen by classically inspired statues, impossibly weightless despite their stone medium. Capturing these whimsical spaces with her Polaroid SX-70 film, and later manipulating the malleable photographic surface to painterly effect, Cole’s documentation resulted in a series truly romantic in both history and conception. Still, Cole felt that the project was somehow incomplete; her English garden series was stored away, and soon forgotten.

Falling Through Time is a resurfacing—of not just time and place, but Cole too, who collaborates with a past self. An incomplete project comes full circle as the English garden series becomes background to the artist’s captivating underwater portraits.

The result is a visual study of time in which personal and mythical histories—refracted through the water surface—layer to create dynamic, ethereal scenes with an editorial edge. “These women do not exist in a moment in time,” says Cole, but rather alongside it, as extra-temporal travelers who float between history’s layers with confidence and mystery.

OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday June 11, 2-4 pm, Artist in attendance

VIEW THE COLLECTION

VIEW THE MAKING OF THIS SERIES (4 MINUTE VIDEO)

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.

SATURDAY MAY 7th, 2-4PM

BAU-XI TORONTO & BAU-XI PHOTO TORONTO

Join us for opening receptions and meet artists Janna Watson (Toronto) and Jill Greenberg (New York)

Click to visit Facebook event for Janna Watson & RSVP

Click to visit Facebook event for Jill Greenberg & RSVP