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1) How was this body of work conceived?

I’ve been taking pictures like these for years. I’m intrigued by product brands and how their placement has evolved as they subconsciously impact our lives. Branding has become more and more globally blended. Every large city I visit seems to be blanketed with names - once unique, now commonplace, regardless of language or culture.

I’m sure I have boxes of negatives somewhere that could be used in this series. Branding is not new but my recent focus on it is.

2) What surprised you most about the process of photographing this brand image phenomenon all over the world?

I didn’t expect to see a man under an umbrella selling candy bars and soft drinks on the Great Wall of China or a girl on a remote island, accessible only by boat, selling melons and wearing a Dolce and Gabana T-shirt. It’s not so much a surprise to see brands in every society, but it’s always a surprise to see how they appear.

3) Travel is essential to your process. What do you get from traveling that you don't get while you're home in Vancouver?

I get a head full of images, sounds, smells that I don’t get at home. I travel when I know it will be warm wherever I go - life on the street, markets, crowds.  I hear other languages being spoken, I get lost on purpose to feel a sense of vulnerability.

4) What roles do ambiguity and humour play in your practice?

I like feeling vulnerable. I like serendipity. People are almost always nice to me and are very accommodating when I take their picture. Humour comes when there is irony. I look for irony.

 5) 'brand' is your first Bau-Xi exhibition featuring purely photographic works (archival inkjet prints) with predominantly documentary/street subject matter. What is it about this mode of documentary street photography that excites you?

I like the immediacy. I like the quick shot, the “screen grab” feel of walking the streets and seeing a gem and capturing it. Sometimes it’s perfect. When the light is right and I can hold the camera steady, it’s a bonus.

6) What is the historical and cultural significance of ‘Kill Your Idols’? Why did this particular moment in time and space draw you in?

I don’t remember seeing the face of the man in the picture. I was drawn by the back of his shirt which read “Kill Your Idols”. At first I read “Kill Your Dolls”. Later after I researched it, I discovered that Kill Your Idols was a 90s punk band from New York.

What made the photo meaningful was that where the man was standing, on a street in Kigali, Rwanda, was once a street that had been ravaged by genocide. The street is now a peaceful place where people co-exist, doing business in their shops and restaurants. It was all quite surreal. On the walls of buildings were hand-painted signs advertising Samsung and other known brands.

7) Is there another piece in the show that has an interesting or strange backstory?

Every piece in this show has a story, not so much a backstory. I look for irony. The piece titled LG is titled so because LG means large. In this case, a size large t-shirt with the face of Che Guevera boldly printed on the front. Che has become an icon, a larger-than-life figure, and now a brand. More interesting to me was that the t-shirt was on display in a high-end clothing store and priced at $830, with the price tag prominently displayed on the face of the shirt.

8) What is the most challenging part of the artistic process for you?

I’m too curious to stay with one subject. I do come back to things I’ve shelved, sometimes with a new approach.

I’m always striving for growth and change. I don’t like the feeling of being stagnant. I’m not one to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  I believe that if you don’t push the envelope, it just sits on the desk. It’s a challenge to not get redundant.

9) How has your work developed in the past few years, and how do you see it evolving in the future?

I’ve been mounting exhibitions since 1974. I began with making sculpture and assemblages. I began to embrace two dimensional work in the 80s. Photography was always of interest to me. I liked the process of adding photos to paintings, then the reverse. I began painting directly onto photos. My subject matter has changed many times over the years. The process has been fairly consistent. Recently I began to paint directly onto images that I would then photograph to be applied to a surface. I would then as before, paint onto that photograph. One more step in the process. I liked where that was heading.

The future, who knows? Every time I try to answer that, I’m surprised at the outcome. Hopefully, all that has passed will help the process.

VIEW NEW WORK BY ANDRE PETTERSON

 

1) What intangible or immaterial moments are you most interested in representing through your work?

I am interested in painting a visual and materially formed record of time. This record of time is created by way of a visual methodology of paint application and reactive decision making. 

Meditation and contemplation are part of my toolkit. I seek to evoke an internal state where a passage of time is experienced, and physically recorded by a calendar of sorts - the grid created by painted layered impasto lines. 

I like the analogy of duplicity and what it reveals: what we first see and know, and what light and shade reveal to us from different vantage points and at different times.  I find that transitory passage inspiring and poetic, like watching the day`s light fade into evening.  Those are the moments that I want to integrate into my work.

 

 

2) What kind of material properties have you observed through the act of painting? How does colour or your perception of colour change as you apply paint layer upon layer? 

The invisible painting layer is the shadow cast by light reflecting off the depth and accumulation of paint.  This is often more apparent in the white grid paintings but the coloured grids also have a directional quality and optical play between the colored impasto lines which have a similar intent.

Within the White Shade grids, the relationship between the form and shadow is depicted in a subtle way.  There is often two works in simultaneous production, one at times invisible. 

3) Your work uncovers the fundamental properties of paint and is often read as drawing, painting and sculpture all in one. Do you see it this way? Do you consider it more like one than the other(s)?

This current body of work has become bas-relief sculptures made by accumulated lines drawn with paint.  Paint, and its properties as a medium, historical references and traditions from different cultures inspire me as do handiwork and textiles. I consider myself a painter who is exploring the visual vocabulary of painting within in a personal experiential framework.

4) Your work appears to be very process-driven. Could you lend a little insight into your process? How does chance play a role in your work, if at all?

The grid for me is a point of departure.  I like its simplicity and perfection when I begin, but it`s the curious imperfection of my mark-making that moves me forward.  Each painting is, although often only subtly different, solved by a visual and emotive reaction unique to each piece.

5) You have spoken of the many skilled artisans in your life, most of whom are women who have worked in textile (knitting, weaving, sewing, embroidering) who have inspired you and your work through the years. What role does craft, and/or these women play in your work?

Generations of women in my family have been skilled in these traditions.  Often out of necessity, they sewed and wove their cloths and linens.

There's always been a skilled beauty to their designs which I've long admired. At first I did not even notice how it was influencing me and my work.  I was always consciously making and seeing patterns in nature and in architecture.  I think the dedication and pride of their skilled production was imprinted on me at a young age.

I have never acknowledged the elitist distinction between so-called “women’s work” and high art. Content and intention of the craft form is what makes it art. I like how both traditions have a voice in my work and together create an equilibrium – I appreciate them both.

6) Looking at your work, one is reminded of the minimalist artist Agnes Martin whose work also had a lot to do with line and repetition. Your work, like Martin’s, demands intimate viewing and quiet contemplation. Martin has remarked about her work: “My paintings are about merging, about formlessness ... A world without objects, without interruption.”  Does this statement resonate with you? If so, how?

Agnes Martin’s work resonates with me in the same way Mondrian does.  When you see how both artists have abstracted reality down to an elemental purity such as line, it’s really quite incredible.  Finding the inner bones, the essence of an object was both their intent and their spiritual experience.  I have a lot to learn from these artists as they continue to inspire me.

VIEW NEW WORK BY VICKY CHRISTOU

1) Could you lend some insight into the tongue-in-cheek title of your exhibition 'Girls Gone Wild'?

With this body of work, I found I had the chance to really show my own experience. I'm out in nature doing all the same wilderness activities that are still thought of as a male pursuit. All the female figures in my work are participating in their surroundings, they don't stand outside of them. They’re not merely passive still-life objects like in other landscape paintings, they're building fires, climbing fences, hiking, paddling, etc. 

2) How long have you been developing this body of work?

I think this body of work has been coming together for a while. I've always been interested in landscape and the history of Canadian painting. To gather my research and find inspiration, I trek into the woods during the summer on backcountry adventures, lugging canoes through swamps crawling with leeches, collecting and chopping wood for campfires and fighting off blackflies, horseflies and every other type of biting critter out there; because of this I've always felt a little at odds with the traditions of landscape painting. It's dominated by male painters and often women are still used as part of the scenery.

 

 

3) From which artistic sources do you find inspiration?

Social media platforms, especially Instagram have influenced my work through their set colour schemes and filters. I also find myself often drawing colour inspiration from current fashion trends. I think that love of colour is the biggest factor in every painting that I do. I tend to get obsessive about colour. My canoe is this really lovely shade of soft robins-egg blue and I've used that shade for the under-paintings in at least half of this body of work. Emerald green also really got under my skin over the past couple months and came out in a lot of these paintings.

I think Kim Dorland’s work has brought new life to landscape and brought it into the contemporary art realm. He's a major source of inspiration along with Peter Doig (perhaps my favourite artist of all), Wanda Koop. I find Christopher Pratt’s use of physical space as its own subject really interesting. I also think that Thrush Holmes neon lines may be subconsciously influencing elements of my work. 

4) How long does it take to complete a painting from conception to final execution?

My process tends to be a fairly long one. I work from photos most often, but what most people don't know is that I rarely use photos that aren't at least a year or two old. Any photos I take from research trips or vacations, I will put away. I will usually forget about them, and wait until those photos aren't photos to me anymore, but instead they've become reminders of specific memories. I need to have an emotional response to an image to make it interesting enough for me to paint. It normally takes a year or two for that to happen. I remember a moment or a feeling that held significance for me and then I go back through my files to try and find the photo that matches that moment. 

After I've decided on an idea, I do a couple sketches in watercolour/pastel/ink/pencil before reverse-engineering that composition with oil paint. In watercolour I work from lightest to darkest, and in oil paint I work from darkest to lightest. This process gives me enough space from the representational image to enjoy the more meditative and intuitive aspects of painting. 

5) Your paintings appear to be highly pre-planned. What kind of techniques are you experimenting with?

In terms of technique, I've been really enjoying the physicality of pushing paint around on canvas and working with oil paint in all sorts of different forms. From working with it almost like watercolour and diluting it to let it drip and mix and flow to sculpting the paint up in different areas to drawing with it on the canvas; mark-making has become a huge part of my process.  

6) Tell us something we wouldn’t guess from your work.

I often add in little objects, almost like Easter eggs. I think that people miss these, so it's always worth taking a second look just in case. There’s a little portage sign in the distance in Forest Through the Trees, and a couple of crushed empty beer cans in Rainy Daze and Delays. The cans are actually a representation of my favourite beer, Wellington SPA from my hometown of Guelph.

VIEW NEW WORK BY MEL GAUSDEN

David T. Alexander will be part of Audain Art Museum’s new exhibition Stone and Sky: Canada’s Mountain Landscape. 

The special Canada 150 exhibition profiles representations of expansive mountain vistas by the likes of Group of Seven Painters Emily Carr, Lawren Harris plus Takao Tanabe, Ann Kipling and others. 

Alexander's ‘Contrasted Day Drawing’ (pictured) and ‘White heat, Keremeos’ will be on view from November 11 until February 26 at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler.

Image details: David T. Alexander, ‘Contrasted Day Drawing', 2008

 

 Joseph Plaskett, Vatheima, Apples & Window, 2006, Oil on Canvas, 39.75 X 24.25 in.

 

Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver and Toronto are honoured to have the opportunity to share never-before exhibited paintings by Joseph Plaskett in concurrent exhibitions running September 30^th through October 11^th, 2017.

Plaskett is considered one of Canada’s most talented and established artists, and has exhibited with Bau-Xi Gallery since 1973. He was born in 1918 in New Westminster, BC, and studied fine art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris, where he lived for many years. Since the 1940s, Plaskett's work has been featured in over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with paintings in major private, corporate, and  esteemed public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2001, he was awarded The Order of Canada for Excellence in the Field of Visual Art.

Those who knew Plaskett (“Joe” to old and new friends) were enchanted by his charm, and by his delight in the process of discovery each painting offered him.  He painted intimate scenes of everyday life, evident in this collection of work: flowers bought from the market, fruit and gourds neatly arranged or toppling across tables, the interior of a simple kitchen cabinet, or the view outside his Suffolk home window. Each canvas expresses a warm humanity, and reveals the artist’s mastery of light, form, and colour.

A desire to learn and experiment contributed to Plaskett’s longevity as a painter, as it urged him to constantly develop his practice. Speaking about the last show he was able to attend at Bau-Xi, Plaskett reflected on his life and work: “I constantly make new discoveries. This describes the excitement and joy in which I work…My aim is Beauty, or Joy. Enlightenment comes without too much conscious thought. It comes as a surprise. I marvel at having done something that has never been done before.”

Plaskett passed away on September 21 in his home in England at the age of 96, and is remembered as an influential artist in Canadian history. We look forward to sharing this special collection of works newly released from the estate with admirers and collectors.

Please join us for the Opening Reception on Saturday September 30^th, 2-4PM, in both Toronto and Vancouver.

 

SELECTIONS AVAILABLE TO VIEW & ACQUIRE IN VANCOUVER & TORONTO:

 

AVAILABLE IN TORONTO:

Chinese Lanterns-Night, 2006, Oil on Canvas, 31.5 X 38.25 in. $20,500

 

 

Chinese Vase & Fruit, n/d, Oil on Canvas, 23.5 X 17.5 in. $9,500

 

 

Pumpkin, Marrow & Bananas, 2007, Oil on Linen, 23.75 X 18 in. $9,550

 

 

Pumpkin & Marrow (2), 2007, Oil on Canvas, 16.5 X 21.75 in. $8,750

 

 

Green & Purple Cabbage, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 29 X 25.25 in. $14,400

 

 

Clivia 2, Gourds, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 25.5 X 31.25 in. $15,500

 

 

The Shelves (2), 2009, Oil on Canvas, 28.5 X 21 in. $15,500

 

 

AVAILABLE IN VANCOUVER:

Untitled Landscape, 1990, Oil on Canvas, 26 X 47.5 in. $20,550

 

 

Cabbage and Onions (3), 2010, Oil on Canvas, 29.5 X 25.5 in. $14,675

 

 

Untitled Still Life, 2007, Oil on Linen, 36 X 36 in. $21,500

 

 

Vertical Table with Apples (1), 2009, Oil on Canvas, 33.5 X 16 in. $11,300

 

 

  Two Amaryllis, 2014, Oil on Canvas, 31 X 31.5 in. $17,750

 

 

Pots on Octagonal Table (4), 2007, Oil on Canvas, 28.5 X 39 in. $19,900

1) Poetry is a major influence for you, how did it inspire the title ‘Of Tristia, Forlorn!’ and in what ways do the two mediums intersect in your practice?

One of my favourite poems, Rodney Koeneke’s “Tristia” is my inspiration for the title. When asked about its influence, I give the example of the line, “one minute you burn, the next/you’re gelatinous as cold spaghetti.” Koeneke has the ability to seamlessly flit between these two vernaculars, one of extreme intensity and passion, and one of light jovial nonsense. This contrast is the perfect precedent for how I want people to receive my work.

Poetry is something that I learned to love before I started painting, and in those regards, I will say that my love for poetry is greater. Furthermore, I believe the two forms of expression to be quite similar in that they are both obscured forms communicative mark making.

 Michelle Nguyen, Brides, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 48 x 59 in.

2) How does your identity and personal history inform your work?

Both of my parents are Vietnamese refugees, and as a second generation Canadian, there is this unsettling feeling of inhabiting an ecotone, torn between the clashing of two sets of values and morals. There is this transgenerational transmission of trauma that I don’t quite understand, and this otherness that exists in both the cultures I occupy. I have accepted that I will never fully be able to articulate and understand the weight of these things. Sometimes, my paintings feel like strange Freudian dreams that capture those conflicts of identity.

3) The majority of your paintings are figurative, what sources are your figures drawn from and are there specific narratives, cultures or figures real or fictional, historical or contemporary that guide your work?

I have a great deal of reference photos stocked up on my phone that I am constantly referring to when I compose a painting. It’s like one big Pinterest board. I pull inspiration from a lot of different worlds of lore and theory. At this moment in time, I am really driven by spatial theory as well as Grecian mythology and the Victorian aesthetic. Honestly, it really depends on what I have been reading that week.

4) You’ve mentioned that you’re greatly influenced by artists like Cy Twombly, Cecily Brown, Egon Schiele and Andy Dixon, could you explain the specific ways in which your practice has shifted as a result of your exposure to their work? 

They have all had a hand in defining the way I paint. I can recall each painting I made after learning about their work. Cecily Brown and Egon Schiele have kept figurative painting exciting for me (a subject I previously had venomously opposed). Andy Dixon has done the same but has also introduced me to the use of oil pastel. Cy Twombly, who is ultimately my favourite painter of all time, has shaped my practice the most. There is just so much confidence and vigour present in his mark marking. You can practically feel the vitality from his brushstrokes. His dynamism is something I am constantly trying to emulate.  

Michelle Nguyen, Jelly Jamboree, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 48.25 x 59 in.

5) Can you explain a little about your process? Do you paint with a sketch or with a composition in mind or is it more spontaneous? How do your canvases evolve into its final form?

I don’t usually do any sketches to prepare. I’ve taken this approach a few times, and it seems more limiting to me than productive. I have a handful of loose and disjointed ideas going in and I feel like I can only figure it out on the canvas itself. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle or a collage. Additionally, I try to treat my canvas as a palimpsest. If something doesn’t work out mid-way I just paint over it with an understanding that no brushstroke is squandered and that they just add to the intricacies of the painting.

6) What does the body represent in your work and in what ways does the figure or the crowd interact with the viewer?

I am largely interested in aesthetic theory and was mostly painting abstracts up until I read Ways of Seeing by John Berger. I specifically was interested in his essay on the naked versus the nude, and the distribution of power amongst the audience and the subject. I thought it would be fun to attempt to invert this dynamic, so I began to experiment with these images of overwhelming mass crowds and alien bodies.

7) Humour plays a significant role in your work, why is it important to you to inject an element of the absurd and comedic into your paintings?

The elements of play and bricolage are very important to my process, and I want that lightheartedness to come through in my paintings.

 

Michelle Nguyen, Carnivory, Oil & Pastel on Canvas, 56.25 x 41 in., 2017

8) You work primarily in oil paint and oil pastel, which qualities in these mediums draws you to them?

I consider oil to be way more forgiving than most painting mediums. I love the texture of oil paints and its ability to capture the subtle gestures of ones brush. As for oil pastels, I think they just aid in emphasizing my existing illustrative style.

Visit Michael Wolf's retrospective, Life in Cities, at the Rencontres d’Arles from July 3 to August 27, 2017. The exhibition will travel to international institutions, including the Fotomuseum Den Haag in January 2018, and will be accompanied by a monograph.

Click here to read more. 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW AVAILABLE MICHAEL WOLF ARTWORK. 

Something Curated has named Joshua Jensen-Nagle in their Top 5 'Must-See Photographers at Photo London 2017'. 

Click image for details

Michael Wolf is who has been featured for his Tokyo Compression series at Flowers Gallery.