Exhibitions

Gavin Lynch | Mondegreens
January 14-28, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday, January 14, 2-4pm | Artist in Attendance

We are proud to commence 2023 with Mondegreens, BC-born and currently Quebec-based artist Gavin Lynch’s anticipated inaugural solo exhibition with Bau-Xi Vancouver. Employing an intuitive and ingenious graphic collage approach to his compositions using a combination of acrylic, watercolour and sand, Lynch builds an aggregate perception of the natural world using field documentation, daily forest hikes, digital archives, imagination and memory. The resulting amalgamated motifs, painted with clean lines, a pixelated effect and exacting precision, speak at once to our changing relationship with nature, the virtual realm and the genre of landscape painting. 

Artist's statement:

Around 2014 I was making paintings of hypothetical scenarios: forest fires, sea squalls and windstorms. Now these are all realities of climate change that we are seeing with startling regularity on the news, internet and in person. 

Right now, I am interested in making images that could be seen as nature re-assembling itself, a post-human landscape somehow evolving by fusing disparate elements together to create unlikely scenarios: spaces where trees from different parts of the globe are coexisting, where interior spaces morph into outdoor spaces, and everything is held together by collage and paint. I have processed nature via the familiar lens of the digital screen, using actual paint to mirror the processes of photo editing software: trees are seemingly copied and pasted into new locales, flora often concede to pixelation, and entire motifs are “dragged and dropped” into new scenarios.

The ability of nature to rebound from human-induced catastrophic events is well documented (demonstrated in Cal Flyn’s wonderful non-fiction book Islands of Abandonment), and I like the poetic idea of doing it pictorially through a painting wherein such a reassembly could splice together unexpected elements. After all, nature often surprises us with its abilities.

- Gavin Lynch 2023

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Steven Nederveen | The Ocean In Us
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
November 19-30, 2022

Steven Nederveen’s work deals with the passage of time, a theme stemming from his own practice of meditation. Moments of peaceful clarity lead the artist to draw connections between our natural environment and aspects of spirituality through an artistic process that combines painting and photography. In this new exhibition, he focuses on the drama of crashing waves, paying homage to the historic seascape paintings of shipwrecks by old Dutch masters, referencing dark black skies, turbulent waters and fine detail.

Artist statement:

As a waterman and the son of a sailor, I’ve spent a lot of time on the waters of the west coast. I know these waters, and yet I can never really know them. The ocean is an endless variety of movement, light and feeling. We can see ourselves in its vastness and depths, its calm and its torrents. Water reflects back to us our inner worlds and emotions. 

In my latest depictions of the sea, I have re-cast the ocean as subject and zoomed in on one small section of turbulent water, using contemporary techniques to distill ocean crashes into gesture and form so that we can feel the full impact and chaos of the untamed sea. I use a golden glow to represent the human spirit, depicting it as an extension of nature itself, inseparable from the beautiful chaos of these waves. The vastness of the water reflects the vastness of ourselves - these pieces are both inner and outer landscape. 

-Steven Nederveen 2022 

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Michelle Nguyen | Horror Vacui

November 5-16, 2022
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 5, 2-4pm - Artist in attendance

Michelle Nguyen uses oil, pastel, and vivid colours to illustrate worlds dense with mythology, symbolism, and narrative. In her current work, Nguyen looks to encourage viewers to think and speak openly about human mortality and acknowledge death as an inevitable reality - she believes that contemporary Western society has created a culture of death denial and fear that is detrimental to the emotional and spiritual well being of the individual and the communities to which they belong. She infuses her images with important commentary on inherited trauma and ancestral grief through her lens as part of a Vietnamese Canadian family.

In her new show, Nguyen explores themes of mortality through the Victorian aesthetic horror vacui (Latin for ‘fear of empty space’) as a way to talk about the unknowns of the future and the afterlife.

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Sheri Bakes | The Company of Stars
October 15-29, 2022
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday October 15, 2-4pm - Artist in attendance

In her signature stippled style with a continuing focus on nature, Sheri Bakes presents a collection of landscapes inspired by a dear friend’s experience hiking from California to BC. Bakes captures the characteristic vegetation along this long route, depicting the changes in landscape, weather and atmosphere evident in the received photos taken along the journey northward.  Bakes’ ever-present indication of movement, breath and life-force - the unseen made visible - connects all her images, inviting quiet contemplation and offering momentary sanctuary from a busy and relentless world.

Artist Statement:

This recent body of work is inspired by a friend’s six-month solo thru-hike along the Pacific Crest Trail and the photos she shared with friends and family along the way. 

Jennifer Szabo entered the Pacific Crest Trail on April 8, 2022, at Mile 0 in Campo, California, and by the time this show opens, she will have finished in Manning Park in BC, sometime in September. 

The Pacific Crest Trail is approximately 2,650 miles and is listed as one of the top five most challenging thru-hikes in the world. Wildfires prevented Jennifer from hiking two sections of the trail, approximately 362.6 miles. 

Building this show was challenging and also gratifying from the start of the process to the finish. It provided a way for me to accompany my friend on her journey from the studio, and to accompany her mom (who is also a good friend) on her own journey of emotions while her daughter was out on the trail, while simultaneously experiencing my own paint-focused journey through the work.

This show is in celebration of my friend Jennifer, her incredible accomplishment in solo thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and also in celebration of her wonderful, very dedicated and supportive family, Peter, Nancy and Emily. 

-Sheri Bakes 2022

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Robert Marchessault | Resilience
October 1-13, 2022
Upper Gallery
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Robert Marchessault is a well-established Canadian painter with an extensive exhibition history. His poetic landscapes focus on space, light, atmosphere and distance. Marchessault’s new works explore one of his beloved subjects - the anthropomorphic presence and emotional impact of a single tree standing amidst wide open plains. Viewing and contemplating the collection in its entirety evokes a sense of tranquility and timelessness. 

Artist statement:

My landscape paintings are made from memory, not from on-site drawings or photographs. I use memory as a filtering agent to remove nonessential visual elements. When a work is successful, it has a poetry that presents some aspect of my understanding of who I am.

In considering this group of new paintings, I see a continuation of my love for iconic trees. These tree paintings are about more than beauty; in them I try to celebrate natural resilience. It excites me to see abundant flowering and green growth emerge in spite of stress and hardships. Tree spirit and energies show outwardly through shape, colour and textures; I mark these onto the surface with my brushes.  These qualities inspire me. The act of painting is my way to respond positively to the way life overcomes hardships. This often begins in a wordless moment of shifted perception.   -Robert Marchessault, 2022

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Nicole Katsuras | Summer Hours
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
June 4-16, 2022

This new body of abstract work by Nicole Katsuras is a reflection on learning to live more lightly, freely and joyfully, while looking forward to future adventures, big and small. Through her experimentation with paint, Nicole's works have evolved into highly textured, full-spectrum surfaces that explore femininity and reference cartography, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and Ukiyo-e. 

Artist statement:

The title ‘Summer Hours’ sparks an emotional response to contemporary life, evoking times or moments of celebration from personal experiences, as well as memories of carefree and joyful times.  There is also a universal anticipation that accompanies the words “summer hours” – they suggest a period that is an accepted ‘break’.  Summer hours are synonymous with beaches, parks, backyards, road trips and adventured-to, faraway exotic lands. It is in these moments of unplugging, recharging and reconnecting with nature that we increase our appreciation for our personal paths and our loved ones.  

My process involves pushing and dragging the paint around on the canvas, and allowing it to dry into satisfying, detailed globs and blobs of stratified, marbled colours on the surface. These suggest landscapes, tapestries and floral elements in thick impasto.

-Nicole Katsuras
2022

Janna Watson | Blue Moon, Blue Ocean
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
January 15 - 29, 2022

Janna Watson delves into the depths of space above and ocean below with a new series of lively and sophisticated abstract compositions. Clusters of purposefully placed gestural strokes in elegant earthy and pearly tones float against backgrounds of velvety navy, suggestive of the enveloping embrace of primordial darkness. Balanced by Janna’s signature poetic titles, these works are suffused with equal parts thoughtful introspection and lightness of being.

Artist Statement:

This series illustrates the dark blues that appear to float in deep, watery, starry space - the space where I’d rather be, in the sky or in the ocean. The ocean is attracted to the moon, and we are all caught somewhere in between that “pull".

When floating, there’s a movement felt, but not seen.

A silent pull.

Things exchanged.

Feelings that can’t or don’t have words. 

Steven Nederveen | Home
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
November 20 - December 2, 2021

Steven Nederveen reframes the grandeur of the Canadian landscape to reflect the essence and lifeforce of Home. By interweaving the mediums of photography and painting, Nederveen conjures a magical realism that brings forth new perspectives on the landscape genre.

Artist’s Exhibition Statement:

During the period of covid in which travel was difficult and we were all stuck at home, I got to thinking what “home” is to me. Home, it turns out, is many things - friends, family, connection, inner peace, playing with my kids. I decided to focus on home as an internal place of stillness and quietude, a place of reflection and contemplation. I have imbued images of island coastlines with these traits. I spent a lot of time as a kid sailing with my family around these islands and have felt the deep sense of peace that speaks through the water and the land. Small islands, distant shores, the open horizon - these take on the feeling of sacred ground, of places to protect. Home is just that: a cherished space with its own life and vitality, each one different and unique.