Exhibitions

DAVID BURDENY | Oceans
350 Dundas St. W, Toronto
May 6 - 31, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6 from 2-4 PM 

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present Oceans, the latest series by David Burdeny. Oceans explores the geological formations of water bodies in the Bahamas, Australia, and Europe, capturing the complex, abstract qualities of the deep sea. Burdeny’s scenes are celebrations of the natural world, but, below the surface, they map a precious and precarious resource. Serpentine sandbars stretch into a Bahamian horizon; Australian bays are sharply rendered fields of impossible blue. Long exposures—evident in views of Sicily—soften waves, revealing formations beneath the water. Bodies that dot the cliff sides cast long shadows, indelible marks on an expanse otherwise untouched. The contemporary sublime is for Burdeny both a call to action that compels one to protect her world, and a message about culpability. Receding vistas are the dreamy escape; human presence is the sobering reminder. Like the depths his exposures reveal, Burdeny unearths layers—of not just the landscape—but the fraught relationship between the earth we inhabit and the environmental future we inherit. 

David Burdeny (b. 1968. Winnipeg, Canada) holds Masters degrees in Architecture and Interior Design, and is the recipient of notable photography awards including Photographer of the Year (Nature category) at the International Photography Awards.

This exhibition has been selected as a featured exhibition for the annual Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival. 

VIEW ARTWORK BY DAVID BURDENY HERE

STEVEN NEDERVEEN | Nature Transforms : Experiments in Layered Landscapes
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
May 6 - 20, 2017

Steven Nederveen's invitation to create a work for the Canadian Consulate in Iceland commemorating Canada's 150th Anniversary has led him to examine his own practice in dialogue with Canadian art for his latest exhibition, Nature Transforms: Experiments in Layered Landscapes. Finding an affinity between his work and the mystical landscapes popularized by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, and Frederick Varley, Nederveen imbues the theosophic appreciation for the Canadian wildness exemplified by these iconic artists  with a new exploration in colour and layering media.

"For this show, in addition to my well-known trees and mountains, I’ve incorporated some groundbreaking new techniques that are used to convey ice and water. I’m interested in the way that water responds to invisible forces around it like, currents, wind, hot and cold temperatures. It’s an element that equally shapes, and is shaped by its environment. I think this has a direct parallel to human struggle and transformation"

Continuing the exchange with Iceland, Nature Transforms includes imagery of Iceland’s breath-taking natural beauty. New abstracted works referencing small cross sections of a glacier pay homage to the cool climate of this northern nation. Nederveen extends the two dimensional painting surface outward by using multiple transparent planes that are raised, painted and cut into. These paintings capture ice in all its fascinating fractures, sediment deposits, and crystal blue transparencies.

 VIEW COLLECTION

JILL GREENBERG | Beast
350 Dundas St. West, Toronto
April 1 - 15, 2017
Opening reception: Saturday, April 1st from 2-4pm
Artist in attendance

Opening April 1^st , Bau-Xi Photo features animal portraits by Canadian-born, New York based photographer Jill Greenberg. Visitors are offered the rare opportunity to view these expressive subjects as they are captured with a traditional portrait setup. Humorous and satirical, these images prompt considerations of the difference between human and beast: “They are us and the opposite of us at the same time,” says Greenberg, “...they seem to be looking back at us, sometimes judging, sometimes in shock.  Is it something we’ve done? Maybe it is just that some of us are trying to pretend we aren’t related. For anyone who doubts Darwin, look in the monkey mirror and think again.”

Jill Greenberg is an award winning photographer for both her commercial and fine art projects. She has been exhibited worldwide, with her work collected by both private collectors and public institutions, including the Portland Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 

VIEW THE ARTIST'S COLLECTION HERE

MICHAEL WOLF | CITY: Michael Wolf Showcase

350 Dundas St. W, Toronto
March 4 - 18, 2017

On display at Bau-Xi Photo, view a selection of works from Michael Wolf's Tokyo Compression, Architecture of Density, Transparent City, and Paris Rooftops series. From the intimate to the alienating, this exhibition captures the nature of urban experience across four cities: Tokyo, Hong Kong, Chicago, and Paris.

Tokyo's claustrophobic subway systems reveal the conditions of the city’s population, and document rapidly expanding urban-industrial centers. Foregrounded views of Hong Kong, Chicago, and Paris skylines magnify perspective and present the cityscape in rhythmic layers of architecture, history, and human intervention. Together, works from each series show Wolf’s commitment to documenting the city as a space we both inhabit and behold.

VIEW COLLECTION HERE

JANNA WATSON | Still Life
340 Dundas St. West, Toronto
April 1 - 15, 2017

Bau-Xi Toronto is pleased to present Still Life, an exhibition of paintings by Janna Watson. The irony of the phrase “still life” is not lost on the artist; her paintings are anything but still, and certainly alive.  In a gestural style characteristic of Watson’s work to date, Still Life is about buzzing paint strokes and peripatetic lines cutting through calm— like cracks in marble, or bursts of lightning in a cloud. Life, in other words, must always leak into stasis. Watson describes this concept, realized in paint, as “a finely drawn but powerful distinction between moments… masses of colourful chaos anchored in the abyss, frozen in time, demanding observation.”

Watson’s work can be found in significant collections including the TD Bank Financial Group, CIBC, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. She is based in Toronto.

VIEW AVAILABLE JANNA WATSON ARTWORK HERE

JAMIE EVRARD | Restless Spring
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
March 4 - 18, 2017

Jamie Evrard's latest series, Restless Spring shows the artist confidently exploring the potential of her oil medium.Sharp strokes of lively green weave between voluminous blooms, making each panel alive with organic density and painterly lightness. Evrard's reference to flowers at their aesthetic peak is a meditation on the subject of transformation, which is central to the exhibition's theme.  “Life changes, so your paintings change,” says the artist, referring to the evolution of her practice.

Evrard's work is included in collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, Vancouver Art Gallery, Seattle Arts Commission Public Works Collection, Government of BC, Ministry of Culture Art Collection, Burnaby Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Simon Fraser University, Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery, University of Victoria, The Claridge Collection, Montreal. Jamie Evrard received a B.A. in Art and Anthropology from Brown University and an M.A. and M.F.A. in studio art with a concentration in printmaking from the University of Iowa.  

CORI CREED | Stage

340 Dundas St. W, Toronto
March 4 - 18, 2017

Visit Bau-Xi Toronto this March to enjoy the latest series by landscape painter Cori Creed. Stage represents a project to capture fleeting glimpses of nature, to isolate in paint the total experience of a scene brimming with life. For the artist, painting is an exploration of this temporal and material process, with the final canvas continuing to unfold before our eyes in vibrant hues and strong painterly forms. Time becomes an essential medium for Creed, who both relishes and contends with the impossible task of rendering an elusive moment. Lush trees bow in the wind, waves lap against the shoreline, and soft clouds build on the horizon, with the artist's characteristic splashes and drips infusing each world with perspective and spontaneity. The resulting works are scenes of nature that play out indefinitely on a painted stage. 

Cori Creed was born in Vancouver in 1973. She studied Fine Art at Simon Fraser University and Design at Capilano College. Her work has been collected and exhibited in both Canada and abroad.

JANNA WATSON | Something in the Air
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
February 4 - 25, 2017

There’s something to be said about the simultaneous looseness and order in Janna Watson’s latest paintings. Watson's latest exhibition utilizes paint, pastels and ink to balance shape and colour harmoniously.  Stained panels of loose, gradated paint offer a quiet backdrop for brilliant plumes of colour.  A new lightness emerges within the characteristic abstract marks of Something in the Air.  The distinct half-moon shape of this current body of work appears billowing and free, like clouds separating and reshaping across the sky.  The stark ink lines have graduated from a cross-hatched nets, holding the abstraction within place to become directional lines guiding the viewer's gaze. A dichotomy achieved through playing with differing media within a single composition, Something in the Air activates all of the five bodily senses allowing the viewer to perceive and react to the emotional and rational experiences of the artist.