News

Sylvia Tait’s recent Vancouver exhibitions were written up in GalleriesWest Magazine’s ‘Five Things’.  Best known for her works on paper, the exhibition at Burnaby Art Gallery illustrates the artist’s journey along her expansive, multidisciplinary career. Read the full write-up in GW Digital’s November 21 issue here.

Sylvia Tait's exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver is now over, but you can view the collection of available work in her online gallery here. 

Sylvia Tait’s retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery is on view until January 7.

Bau-Xi Gallery is proud to announce Sylvia Tait's latest retrospective opening Thursday, November 16 (7-9 PM) at The Burnaby Art Gallery.

This survey of works on paper by the acclaimed West Coast artist includes ink drawings, digital drawings, prints, acrylic paintings, collages, posters and ephemera. While Tait is largely recognized as an abstractionist and a colourist, the exhibition will also include a selection of figurative works, with a particular focus on friends, family and the cultural community. 

Accompanying the exhibition is a special catalogue with an introduction by curator Ellen van Eijnsbergen and essay by co-curator Robin Laurence.

Sylvia Tait : Journey runs from November 17-January 7, 2018 and full exhibition and event details can be found by clicking here.

VIEW NEW WORK BY SYLVIA TAIT

Jeffrey Milstein, NYC 55 Times Square, Archival Inkjet Print Mounted on Archival Substrate

Acclaimed American photographer Jeffrey Milstein is featured in the November issue of Fortune magazine. In this article, Milstein discusses his exciting new book, LANY: Aerial Photographs of Los Angeles and New York (Thames & Hudson), as well as his passion for aviation, his appreciation for architecture and what it is like to photograph two of the most famous cities in America from above. 

 

Fortune 500 issue cover, June 2016.  Photograph by Jeffrey Milstein. 

Works from Jeffrey Milstein's LA NY series will be exhibited at Bau-Xi Photo (350 Dundas Street West) for the month of December. Join us Saturday November 2 from 2-4pm for the opening reception, and launch of the new book. 

Click here to read the full Fortune article

Click here to read further press about the series: Milstein featured in Architectural Digest

Click here to read a review of Milstein's new book in Musée Magazine

Click here to view available work by Jeffrey Milstein

David Burdeny, Spiral Jetty 2 Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2017, Archival Pigment Print Face-Mounted to Plexiglass, 59 X 59 in., $11,550

Bau-Xi Gallery is proud to present new work by acclaimed Canadian photographer David Burdeny. 

These photographs were released exclusively with Bau-Xi Gallery at Art Toronto 2017, and mark the second iteration of the artist's hugely successful SALT series (released exclusively with Bau-Xi Gallery at Art Toronto 2015). 

With this collection, Burdeny returns to Great Salt Lake in Utah, once again producing beautiful topographic shots of the vibrantly colored salt making ponds. 

David Burdeny, Photosynthetic 2, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2017, Archival Pigment Print Face-Mounted to Plexiglass, 44 X 44 in., $6450

These new works are presented in a contemporary plexi face-mount style, with a slim 1 1/4 inch profile.  A hidden aluminum channel on the back offers easy installation and a beautiful, frameless presentation.

Art Toronto 2017, David Burdeny's new work debuted exclusively with Bau-Xi Gallery 

David Burdeny, Tangents 2, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2017, Archival Pigment Print Face-Mounted to Plexiglass, 44 X 44 in., $6450

David Burdeny, Halogens 1,  Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2017, Archival Pigment Print Face-Mounted to Plexiglass, 44 X 55 in., $6850

David Burdeny, Tangents 2, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 2017, Archival Pigment Print Face-Mounted to Plexiglass, 44 X 44 in., $6450

1) The Bau-Xi Gallery feels a great sense of pride and gratitude in having the privilege of representing your work for forty years. Are there any touchstones in your practice or philosophy that have remained a constant theme or preoccupation over this period of time ?

Because the camera can reproduce almost any subject, place or incident in exquisite detail, it leaves the painter free to invent and insinuate oneself into a world of one’s own. This is both an advantage and a problem. People still insist the artist should try to become the camera. The inventor-painter can open other aspects of reality. That is challenging and one has to newly invent the world each time when starting a new work.

2) Double Entendres is an intriguing and heavily weighted title for your solo exhibition. Please explain the genesis behind it. 

Double Entendres have different interpretations or meanings which allow for poetics and insights, plus in this particular situation, my two exhibitions ( at Bau-Xi Vancouver and my retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery ) are running simultaneously but with different approaches and media and time sequences.

3) One immediately equates the word COLOUR in bold letters to your work in general. What role does colour play in your work ? 

Colour: That is hard because colour use is such a personal expression, possibly even cultural with those choices of values that become recognizable in place and context.

Emotions and deep or fragile feelings can be remembered through colour as well as the other prime senses. A coloured stroke put beside another hue or tone evokes a dialogue of its own for me.

Colour is love. 

4) The sense of sound is often strongly evoked in many of your titles such as Arpeggios, Diminuendo, Mumbo Jumbo, Clashes and Bangs, Sun Song with either their musical references, use of sound poetry, or references to human speech or sounds from the natural world.
How does music or sound inform or inspire your work ? Do you have any favourite composers or musicians or genres of music or a radio program or station that you often listen to while you paint or do you paint in silence ?

Music and soundscape is vital to me. In a time of great grief and trauma, I feel it was music that saved me from total despair. The abstract language of music speaks to the visual artist in the same way. The approach to the form and vitality of expression and feeling is similar. There is enormous happiness, excitement and humility in recognizing that unique understanding that is humanity at its best. 

I am from another era in today’s mass media hype. Classical music in most of its forms as well as contemporary composers and performers keep my CDs flourishing as well as the CBC ( when it behaves itself.)

Today I prefer chamber music, more intimate noting, although opera excites and thrills me with the marvellous voices that flourish today all over the world. The combination of theatre, sound and drama can’t be beat !

5) Another consistent theme in your titles seem to be about the journey or the transcending of boundaries or the reference to this particular place or geography that you call home for example: Coming from Away, Out of Bounds, Crossing-Ways, Pathways and Partings , Vancouver Sound-scape , West Coast Suite . 

Titles are a way of adding poetry, linking the message/subject and giving some insight to the art, with the necessity for naming. Often it can be more difficult than painting . 

The “Journey“ is a metaphor for a traveler in time and idea space. Every experience brings new questions and revelations not always digested at the same time , so pathways just lead the way as boundaries eventually get fragmented and blown away.

6) Please explain the difference and/or similarity between painting on paper and painting on canvas in your works as you typically include both media in your solo exhibitions.

Painting on canvas or wood or paper is quite different. Each surface has different qualities and different pigments seem to require special techniques. I love the sensuality and depth of colour of painting with oils for the canvases, but the racy fast drying acrylics work best for me on paper.

7) Congratulations on your upcoming solo retrospective at the Burnaby Art Gallery opening Nov 16th, 2017. What can we look forward to there that would be different from this upcoming exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver ?

A few years ago art critic, writer, and art historian Robin Laurence suggested a “look back” for a possible retrospective of my work. So I revisited old drawings and paintings from the very beginning. Things stored away not seen for years brought back new feelings that I could enlarge upon and add new vigour to my palette and confidence. The retrospective that the Burnaby Art Gallery has most generously offered to mount will consist of multiple paperworks done almost from the beginning of my Art Journey up to the present day.  I understand there will be a published catalogue as well.  

The upcoming Vancouver Bau-Xi exhibition consists primarily of new works on canvas as well as some new large mixed media paperworks. I am grateful for the tenderness and generosity of both galleries and curators.

8) And do you have any advice for young artists just beginning their artistic journey ?

Words for young artists …. .. keep the passion alive and trust your instincts.

VIEW MORE WORK BY SYLVIA TAIT

The International Sculpture Collection, in collaboration with the Royal Botanical Gardens has just installed Ted Fullerton’s monumental sculpture “(H)our Glass” at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario. Fullerton’s recent work explores the idea of both spiritual and secular centers, “where nature and humanity intersect as a paradigm for a pantheistic model, a reconciliation of opposites.”

VIEW MORE WORK BY TED FULLERTON

In anticipation of her most recent series, Figure Painting, we sat down with Toronto artist Barbara Cole to learn about her process, methods and inspiration behind her most minimal work to date.  

1) “Figure Painting” is a remarkable title for a series of photographs. What inspired this title?

I have been known to have five, six or even more "working titles" to my shows. This has the effect of driving people crazy – especially my studio assistants. It’s very unusual for me to find a title at the outset that sticks but this one did. Figure Painting embodies the correlation between drawing with the camera in water and messing around with finger paints as a child. It was a fun play on words that sums up my approach to photography.

2) What was the most challenging aspect of creating this particular series?

Working with these talented performers is always quite challenging. Not only do they need to work under the water in a graceful way, but they need to learn how to breath for balance, keep their eyes relaxed and open, straighten their wardrobe and hair, and brush any stray bubbles off their faces and bodies. With Figure Painting they were stripped down, quite literately. Their body was their wardrobe so on top of everything they had to find poses that would cover certain parts of their anatomy.  

Technically there are always challenges because every idea requires a new approach. I think you just have to believe that anything is possible and then get your crew on side to see your vision and help with its execution.

3) This series has an unusual back story - it turned out quite differently than you had originally conceived. Can you tell us about the original concept, and how it transitioned?

It was amazing how this show came about. I had worked up big plans for another body of work called WHIRL, based loosely on the idea of a Whirling Dirvish. As is often the case, things underwater work differently. Within moments of the first day of shooting I knew I would have to think of something else. As I looked around my pool-side studio at my crew, and feeling no small amount of pressure, I pulled the Figure Painting concept out of my back pocket…which is to say virtually out of thin air. I didn’t know I had a backup idea until that moment, but I suppose all of us artists do.

4) There is a historical tradition of painters referencing photography, and vice-versa. Are there any artists whose transcendence of the boundary between the two mediums you find inspiring?

The moment I saw the work of French photographer Sarah Moon I recognized how powerful photography could be. Nobody else’s work has ever touched me the same way since. The evocative nature of her imagery still takes my breath away but back then I was totally spellbound. Since the first Sarah Moon photograph I ever glimpsed  I understood how the camera could be used for nuance and gesture.

For the past six years I’ve been reading about the talents of past image makers and I especially love the mood and atmosphere of the Pictorialist photographer, Heinrich Kuhn circa 1900’s. He has created without a doubt some of the most beautiful photographs I have ever seen. Kuhn had complete control of the photographic medium.

5) Could you describe how your passion for swimming informs your practice as an artist?

Strangely, I have always solved creative problems while swimming. If this happens early in the swim I cross my fingers for the rest of the swim so that I don’t forget. It is awkward to swim with crossed fingers! The water has been my office since the 70’s and I swim as many days a week as I can. I look forward to what will happen. Sometimes I figure something out that I didn’t even realize needed looking at. Other times my mind wanders and I find I’ve set up the next shoot. All the time I feel energized to tackle life.

 6) What advice would you offer to emerging artists?

I would encourage an emerging artist to find their own voice. I believe that is the best way to succeed. There are so many people out there all doing the same thing with various levels of expertise. One creates art for oneself. It’s something that comes from inside you and not the other way around. Manage your expectations so you don’t get discouraged and give up. You are building a practice and that takes time.

Learn more about Barbara Cole's incredible new series here: 

Bau-Xi Gallery will be showing a special preview of Figure Painting at the Toronto International Art Fair on Thursday, October 26. Visit us in booth A18 for an exclusive look. 

The full series will be on display at Bau-Xi Photo, (350 Dundas St. West, Toronto), starting Saturday, November 4. There will be an opening reception from 2-4pm, and the artist will be in attendance.

1) What meaning does the title of the exhibition Shift hold for you?

I think about the purpose of painting. Is it to record a place? A moment? A feeling? Or is it to communicate ideas and tell stories with marks and strokes and colour? If the painting is at all representational, there is a subject, a scene, an illusion. And there is always process. I like to disrupt the illusion with reminders of the process. And so, this exhibition focuses on the shift, as my current practice oscillates between the story and the storytelling.

2) There is a real sense of movement and an exploratory quality of mark-making in this body of work. Are there new concepts, techniques, or new sites/locations that have inspired you?

I am endlessly questing for inspiration and so many different things find their way into my work. It could be the negative space in another artist’s work, a stage set at a theatre or the medium. I am always searching new ways to mix and apply it.

3) It’s interesting to think that not so long ago, you were so strongly linked with the arbutus tree as your dominant subject matter, yet not a single one appears in this show. Is this a conscious decision?

Not really. I am a bit blown by winds of obsession! Currently, I’m captivated by the abstraction that oceanscapes offer, the graphic nature of birch trees, or light patterning afforded by forest.

4) Do you approach the oceanscapes differently from the landscapes?

Oceanscapes are so much about movement, and there is freedom found in painting a scene with no fixed element. Even the horizon becomes blurred with light and weather. The focus can be placed heavily on the language of the paint.


5) This is the first time we have seen the introduction of the smaller 10 x 10 inch oil studies. Could you tell us a little about them?

Sometimes I do sketches to plan a painting. Sometimes I feel that planning hampers the unconscious influences that I feel can be crucial. For this body of work, as I try to move toward the essential elements of a scene or time, I found it helpful to create small pieces. The studies helped me to maintain a sense of space when to a larger canvas.

6) What are your plans in the studio after this show ?

I experimented with a couple pieces in this show by shooting references at night. The references were illuminated by an artificial light source and being able to control my lighting helped to set the stage. I would like to look into this further.

Photography courtesy of Sarah Jane Photography

VIEW COLLECTION ONLINE