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1. The title of this exhibition, ‘Open the World’ takes its name from a piece you completed earlier this year. What is the significance of the title and the particular moment that inspired it?  

The title is a bit multifaceted. Externally it relates to concerns I have regarding the state of current North American and world politics, global warming, and the overall wellness of the planet. Internally as far as humanity goes, it relates to concerns I have about the wellness of humanity.

Sometimes titles come from seemingly unrelated places. This title came as I was looking out my kitchen window at a non-functioning septic tank that sat lifted half way out of the ground. The tank had nothing to do with the content of the painting but 'Open the World' was what I heard when I looked at it and the light fell through the foliage beside that area. 

When something isn't working, I sit with it until it opens and the issue resolves itself inside its own answer. I'm not sure what the answer is for the planet, but I guess I'm at the stage of being open and sitting with it. Listening to the things that aren't functioning and the reality of the direction we are heading in on every level. 

'Open the World,' for me anyway, keeps my mind open and gives my heart hope. I think this is something we (or maybe I) really need.

2. Do you see these new paintings as unique, or a part of a series?

Conceptually, all of my work stems back to my first show which was based on Rewach (Spirit, breath or wind). The focus on this specific quality has been consistent. My interest for each show is in constantly working to improve my craft and ability to paint. The hope is to bring something new to each show. To keep paring down what it is that needs saying at that particular time. Inside the physicality of painting, maybe a few new colours I might be working with, or variations in brushstrokes. But the basis of the work, always, is spirit, breath or wind.

3. You are well-known for your treatment of light. Can you share some observations on the light quality in Vancouver Island versus Vancouver/Lower Mainland?

As I sit here typing, the air quality in my area has been rated 10+ due to the smoke from wildfires. It seems to be the same everywhere in BC at the time this was written and while a lot of the work was being made. I do think the heat, smoke and wildfires have greatly impacted my work and ability to work for this show. I believe this has impacted some change in the work as well in terms of colour mixing choices and some choices made in application.

5. You described media theorist Marshall McLuhan’s thoughts on art “as a distant early warning system”. Could you tell us a little bit about what this means to you and your thoughts on the potential of art for personal or social change? 

I really like a lot of Etienne Zack's work in terms of how it addresses instability and imminent collapse of a structure onto itself. How the networks within the paintings function as a complex maze that draw you in and make it difficult to get out before the whole thing collapses in on you. For me Etienne is a great example of an artist whose work is an early warning system. Collapse of salmon stocks. Collapse of our resident orcas (J-Pod), collapse of the glaciers, bees, all the water that Nestle is taking and selling back to us for massive profit... 

I feel gravely concerned about many of the current issues our world is facing. I also have to create a light-thread of hope through that concern. To illuminate the positive things inside those very real threats.

Somehow I have to make paintings as a physical practice of gratitude. To somehow stand for, insist upon and honour the wellness of the planet. 

Open the World opens on September 8 at Bau-Xi Vancouver

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Nguyen’s paintings are often scattered with figures of nude women, animals, plants, and domestic scenes. While they evoke a sense of traditional oil-painting practice, Nguyen approaches the female form in a more feminist and modern way.

25-year old emerging-Xi artist, Michelle Nguyen, is featured on the August cover of the Georgia Straight as part of the Vancouver Mural Festival, the city's third annual celebration of public art.

Speaking to Laura Sciarpelletti of the Georgia Straight, Nguyen elucidates upon her painting practice, artistic process, and her theoretical and historical influences. Click here to read the full article.

Michelle Nguyen's mural can be found off Main Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in Vancouver's bustling Mount Pleasant neighbourhood. 

View Michelle Nguyen's Collection

Before I get to the question, I’d like to set the stage first.

This show is about water and it's capacity to transform both itself as well as ourselves. “Light Play” captures the mesmerizing qualities of water and light.  Fluid and moving, glistening and refracting, water nourishes our spirit. It represents all the characteristics we love; to be pure, deep, transparent, intuitive, nurturing, reflective and receptive. Water embodies the idea of transformation, it shapes and can be shaped, and can express both the light and the heavy of personal journeys.

I wanted this emotional quality to be at the forefront and chose the thick application of paint for it’s unfiltered directness. Resin and acrylic sheets are great for playing with light, depth and colour, and would have been a great choice to explore the qualities of water. However, in this show I embraced the textural and visceral qualities of paint because I think they have greater emotional traction. By exposing every brushstroke and decision to the viewer, the hand of the artist is more apparent. A tension is built between the soothing water scene and the rough, scraped, splattered application of paint. The disconnect between human expression and beauty of nature creates an interesting dialogue.

2. What experimental methods or techniques might we see in this new body of work?  How has your approach to the painting and photography elements of your mixed media practice evolved over time.

There is less and less photography coming through on my pieces in this show. In some cases, there is no photo at all. I use the photo to depict “reality” while the paint serves to enhance or reveal some kind of magic within the landscape. That is still happening but now I’m using paint to also be in opposition to the realism of the photo. The result is a more personalized landscape, one that captures more of the human relationship and struggle.

3.You often flatten illusory depths with surface intervention and disrupt photographic realism with textural paint application and hyper-saturation, what is the conceptual motive behind these compositional choices.

These are all ways to interrupt the viewer from seeing the landscape from a passive stance. We all take landscapes around us for granted and I don’t want to represent more of that so I focus on details and find the magic within it. Even with my panoramic scenes, it is full of painted un-natural details that give the image an overall sense of something that transcends nature. They either invite the sublime or reveal some kind of struggle. Ideally, both.

4. To what extent are your compositions situated at the photographic site? Do the finished pieces relate to real places or become imagined realms and how does this process occur?

I’m generally focused on the emotional response and idea in the work, but having said that, Vancouver and the Gulf Islands are always “alive” in my work. It’s the place where many of my favourite childhood sailing memories come from. It’s also where I experienced the greatest connection to nature. All this feeds directly into my artistic practice.

5. What is the significance of the title Light Play? How does this body of work relate to the physical energy and natural agent of light, its symbolic meaning as well as its place in optics, painting and photography?

I play with light as “spirit” or as a sublime element that shines through the material world in strange and unnatural ways. It’s intended to help the viewer imagine their own spirit in the scene, to imagine that they are part of the wave, as part of something in movement, expansive and full of light.  In “The Merging of Water and Sky”, the refraction of light through the water droplets creates a kind of glowing stardust - imagine that’s you -  that blurs the boundary between water and sky, combining the vastness of both. 

6. How has your subject matter and approach to subject matter changed over the course of your career? What about the natural environment continues to inspire you and what drew you to this specific site? 

I’ve tried a lot of different subjects in my career and I’m always dancing around this fairly abstract idea of the sublime within nature. I’ve shifted my focus slightly from trying to depict it’s existence, or an experience of it, to the struggle of finding it. In the past, I used my experiences from meditation and time spent in nature to inform my visual exploration of the subject, but my meditation practice and nature excursions have long since faded away and my efforts to rekindle the practice have been frustrating at best. The struggle has become the new subject, and in painting water I’ve discovered more flexibility to express the human element. 

Sylvia Tait is featured in A Generous Spirit: Highlights from the Permanent Collection, a group exhibition honoring the West Vancouver Art Museum's new designation. Curated by Darrin Morrison and Jackie Wong, the exhibition brings together select works from celebrated Canadian artists held within the museum's permanent collection.

A Generous Spirit runs from July 25–September 1, 2018 with a talk and tour hosted on Saturday, August 18 at 2pm. 

VIEW WORK BY SYLVIA TAIT

It’s the subtleties of blue that entrance me - the evocative, inky blues of velvet, the delicate, thin veils of the sky, or the layered ruffles of a rumbling lake. I’ve always been drawn to water (my studio is on a lake) and the intricacies of blue are cool and contemplative to me.

– Darlene Cole

Wassily Kandinsky wrote of the colour blue in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art: “The deeper blue becomes, the more urgently it summons man towards the infinite…” Yves Klein, expressing a like-minded sentiment, once stated "Blue is the invisible becoming visible. Blue has no dimensions, it is beyond the dimensions of which other colours partake". When called to speak on the famed pigment which bears his name, Klein would often borrow the words of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard: “First there is nothing, then there is a deep nothing, then there is a blue depth."

Blue has far surpassed the rest of the chromatic spectrum in its saturation of the collective consciousness, bleeding swathes of blue into the vernacular. The colour occupies a liminal space, both material and intangible, it is at once the hue closest to both light and dark. For the Summer Group Exhibition A Deeper Shade of Blue, on view until July 28th, Bau-Xi Gallery has invited gallery artists to participate in a dialogue engaging with the rich art and cultural history of the colour blue and to provide insights on their own personal relationship with the hue and its place in their individual practices.           

The colour blue for me has always been a symbol of eternity, of an endless sky and a timeless ocean. I have always been drawn to its beautiful calm and provocative mystery. Blue evokes so many emotions and states of experience.

- Vicky Christou

“Blue is the colour of infinity. Of cloudless skies and deep calm seas. It has no dimensions. Blue is the space between breaths.”  – Vicki Smith

“Recently, the colour blue has represented to me the deepest part of the lake and the things moving below the surface that you can't see.” - Mel Gausden

“L’Heure Bleue - the twenty minutes or so before the sun comes up or after it goes down - is one of my favourite times of day.  The beauty of the indirect light during those brief periods is as mysterious and evocative as the colour blue itself and can make the ordinary appear extraordinary.” – Jamie Evrard

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The rich colour and playful energy of Janna Watson's paintings interject a sense of whimsy into the luxury villas of JW Marriott's recently opened hotel in downtown Vancouver.

Developed by Parq Vancouver's design team, the sophisticated interior schemes of the villas pair beautifully with expressive brushwork and free form abstraction of Watson's work. Placed at strategic locations throughout the villas to create visual impact, the inclusion of original artwork offers a dramatic counterpoint against the backdrop of Vancouver's False Creek.

Thank you to Parq Vancouver for collaborating with us on this excellent project.

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We are thrilled to announce that internationally acclaimed Bau-Xi photographers Jeffrey Milstein and Michael Wolf will have their work featured on the cover of Civilization, The Way We Live Now, written by Bill Ewing and Holly Roussell Perret-Gentil. This publication will feature work by 140 contemporary photographers and will be published in conjunction with a traveling museum exhibition by the same title. Civilization, the exhibition, will open at the National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seoul, South Korea, and will tour to different locations around the globe. 

Jeffrey Milstein, Newark 8 Terminal B, Newark, NJ

Two editions of the Civilization book will be published. The first is an exhibition catalogue featuring Jeffrey Milstein's Newark 8 Terminal B, Newark, NJ (image above), which will be available for sale at each exhibiting museum. Milstein captured this spectacular aerial depiction of Newark Liberty International Airport from a helicopter in flight.  Characteristic of his aerial series to date, the image is remarkably detailed and perfectly symmetrical, offering a detailed study of the intricate workings of the structure below. The artist has placed a hold on this highly sought-after image until September 2018. 

Michael Wolf, Architecture of Density 91. 

The second version of the book will be available for sale in bookstore and online in Fall 2018. This edition features Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density 91 on the cover - image above. Known for its cropped studies of dense urban landscapes, Michael Wolf's ‘Architecture of Density’ series captures Hong Kong’s highly compressed, often brutal, architectural style. By eliminating the sky and horizon line to flatten each image, Wolf turns the architectural façades into seemingly never-ending abstractions. 

The exhibition is produced by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography in collaboration with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea. The associated publication will be released in October 2018 in English by Thames & Hudson; in German by Knesebeck; in Italian by Einaudi ; in Korean by Youlhwadang. The museum edition is produced by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography.

To view all works by Jeffrey Milstein, click here.

To view all works by Michael Wolf, click here.

The Scottish National Gallery has acquired Jeffrey Milstein's 49 Commercial Jets for their permanent collection, and has selected it to feature in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, their current exhibition at The Scottish National Portrait Gallery. This is their first acquisition of work by the acclaimed American photographer.

49 Commercial Jets is a composite image that Milstein created in 2007. It consists of photographs of jets landing at the Los Angeles International Airport, which Milstein's favourite location for shooting aircrafts. This image is part of Milstein's acclaimed series, “Aircraft: The Jet as Art” that was exhibited in a year-long solo show at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC from November 2011 – November 2012. 

Click here to learn more about the exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It runs until January 13, 2019.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MORE WORK  BY JEFFREY MILSTEIN