Barbara Cole | Impermanence
Barbara Cole | Impermanence
November 6 - December 1, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening reception: Saturday, November 8th from 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM | Artist in Attendance
At Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin this November, we are honoured to present Impermanence, a timeless exhibition by award-winning Canadian photographer, Barbara Cole. Harkening back to her beginnings in photography, Cole explores her imagery through classic film techniques via black-and-white film, shot on a mid-20th Century camera. The resulting work captures her figures with a poetic vision, creating a space that exists without limitation.
Artist Statement:
Impermanence invites the viewer to embrace the unknown and the ever-shifting nature of being human. Departing from the vibrant colors of my underwater work, these black-and-white photographs - shot with a 1950s camera on traditional film - feature anonymous, sheer figures that feel both expressive and elusive. By leaving the film edges intact, I seek to emphasize the tactile quality of the prints and opens a window into a world where unpredictability sparks endless possibility.
The images are never static. As the viewer lingers, new perspectives and hidden details emerge, revealing a dreamlike sense of movement. Ephemeral and poetic, each photograph captures a longing for what was and what could be, inhabiting a timeless space where identity is always in flux. – Barbara Cole
Kyle Matuzewiski, the Co-Director of Bau-Xi Gallery, shares his thoughts:
With each body of work, Barbara continues to reinvent her practice. At times, the way she approaches her craft seems to defy the physical bounds of photography. I have come to view her as a dreamer, with equal measures of artist, chemist, and historian, finely balanced to open the realm of possibility. She is constantly moving, searching, and seeking inspiration.
If Barbara has a concept she wishes to explore, she will tap into each of those traits to manifest those ideas. She explores the history of photography, utilizing processes that may seem esoteric to some - wet-collodion - or the use of modern processing approaches - digital inkjet prints on transparencies - to create her singular vision. With Impermanence, Barbara honours black-and-white photographs, used by luminaries such as Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, or Cindy Sherman.
When experiencing this series, I find myself thinking of Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, where the artist seeks to capture and preserve the ambiguity of her figures, allowing the viewer to place themselves within the frame. The stark black and white images are timeless, not specifically identifiable, and open to the realm of possibility. Barbara Cole suspends her figures within a moment in time, pushing the viewer to move beyond their initial reaction to the image. While the women within her work are delicate, elegant and graceful, there is a strength to their movements and compositions. They exist independently of what we see, feel, and think.
I look forward to where this journey takes Barbara and what comes next. In the meanwhile, I will revel in what she has accomplished with Impermanence.
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Born in Toronto in 1953, Cole works across multiple photographic mediums, including underwater photography and modernized wet collodion. Known for ethereal imagery depicting figures in states of weightlessness and transformation, she continues to push boundaries, blending traditional techniques with inventive approaches in her quest for timelessness.
Cole’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo and Washington, D.C., and is featured in international corporate collections. She was the subject of an episode in the documentary series Snapshot: The Art of Photography II and published her book Between Worlds with teNeues in 2023.