HOLIDAY | New Works by Gallery Artists
December 9-23, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday December 9, 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present our annual holiday group exhibition, featuring beautiful new works in the spirit of the season.
The exhibition includes works by Vicky Christou, Eric Louie, Sylvia Tait, Kyle Scheurmann, Cori Creed, Anne Griffiths, Casey McGlynn and more.
Vicki Smith | Ripple Effect
November 18-30, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 18, 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Vancouver presents Ripple Effect, the highly anticipated solo exhibition from Toronto based artist Vicki Smith. Vicki Smith is a painter whose goal is peace. These evocative new images, replete with the calm energy of Smith's own meditation practice, feature the artist's incredible skill with the brush in capturing the look and movement of water. They draw in the viewer, prompting memories of times when swimming and floating enabled moments of solace amidst the cacophony of life.
Artist Statement:
Appearing from The Walrus magazine and Connor Garrel, upon express request of the artist as her favoured artist and show statement:
"All of the women in Vicki Smith's paintings are suspended, floating in water and time. They court peace in pools and lakes. postponing gravity, going nowhere fast. Sometimes you can glimpse some rocks or stretch of shore at the edge of a frame, but mostly they are alone, buoyant and unbothered. These scenes are rendered almost romantically, with impasto snarls of blue and green and ochre, and when Smith talks about them, she uses words like "serene", and "meditation", and "memory". She doesn't even think of her women as "swimmers", she says. "To me, it's more intangible than that, a limitlessness that's closer to flying."
-Connor Garrel on Vicki Smith, July/August 2023
Steven Nederveen | Special Trees
November 4-16, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 4, 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Special Trees, the new exhibition from Toronto based artist Steven Nederveen. This timely and moving series focuses on the evolving understanding of community amongst trees, and what humans can learn from embracing and emulating the trees' natural practice of working together and helping each other. Nederveen is known for drawing connections between our natural environment and aspects of spirituality through an artistic process that combines painting and photography. By combining and integrating these mediums, Nederveen develops a magical realism that insists on new perspectives on the landscape genre.
Artist statement:
For the past 15 years I have used my depiction of trees to evoke an "austere and serene beauty, expressing a mood of spiritual solitude recognized in Zen Buddhist philosophy” (from the Definition of Wabi). My trees represented the isolation, strength and stillness we have within ourselves. In this latest body of work, my trees focus on the communal aspects of life. I've added vibrant colors and delicate patterns to small tree groupings to imply connectedness: a vision of trees as having families and communities. This comes from relatively recent scientific research that has revealed that trees have a complex and interconnected social network. Through their root systems and underground fungi networks, trees are able to communicate with each other and share resources, such as nutrients and water. This network is sometimes referred to as the "wood wide web". The concept of the "wood wide web" highlights the importance of interconnectedness and community, and that trees are not the solitary plants we once thought, but are actually living in dynamic relationships to the other plants, able to work together to raise saplings, ward off intruders and send warnings. Just as humans rely on each other for support, cooperation, and empathy, trees also depend on each other for their survival.
-Steven Nederveen, 2023
Sheri Bakes | An Origami of Wind
October 21 - November 2, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday October 21, 2-4pm | Artist in Attendance
Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents An Origami of Wind, the new solo exhibition of atmospheric works from BC based artist Sheri Bakes. Inspired by the forests of Vancouver Island and North Vancouver, these atmospheric paintings reflect the artist’s ongoing interest in wind, motion, and meditative breathwork, with fine attention given to light and its stippled effect. Bakes’ ever-present indication of movement, breath and life-force - the unseen made visible - connects all her images. inviting quiet contemplation.
Artist’s statement:
This new body of work is an exploration of landscape around Vancouver Island as well as Vancouver’s North Shore mountains. When I lived in Vancouver I hiked in the North Shore mountains with my dogs 4-5 times a week in the mornings through the spring, summer and fall months. We mostly hiked a couple trails on Mt. Seymour, and the more we hiked these trails the more I felt the ever changing landscape occupying space inside myself: the boundary perception between inside and outside of myself became very thin. I suppose this is also true for the areas of Vancouver Island I’ve been fortunate enough to explore. I think I gravitate towards certain kinds of energy and these two places offer this specific energy and light in really strong, consistent abundance.
Wind, much like origami (the Japanese art of paper folding) moves through landscape, folding land into a kinetic sculpture of shapes. This show is a moving meditation on the relationship of origami in nature.
-Sheri Bakes 2023
Eric Louie | Becoming
October 5 - 17, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Thursday, October 5, 6-8pm | Artist in Attendance
Bau-Xi Vancouver is thrilled to present Becoming, the anticipated new exhibition from Vancouver based artist Eric Louie. Louie's signature shimmering abstract forms almost appear to slowly move and shift, reflecting the collection's theme of the four seasons and the ever-changing nature of life. Louie's works possess a chameleonic ability to exist comfortably among a multitude of aesthetics, from 1920s Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern through to the late 20th Century and into the forefront of contemporary design.
Artist Statement:
My latest show approaches ideas surrounding the four seasons, perpetual change and cyclical nature of life. Different temperatures found in light and colour exemplify each passing moment depicted. The connection between the changing seasons, their varying colours and our projected memories associated with them is where the work touches most eloquently. Each painting involves some interaction and reaction between the imposing forms inhabiting the spaces I’ve created. Some semblance of the elements comes out in each scene where I’m focused on pulling that “feeling” out of myself.
-Eric Louie, 2023
Sheila Kernan | Inbetween
August 5 - 17, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday, August 5, 2-4pm | Artist in Attendance
Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present Inbetween, the new exhibition from Calgary-based landscape artist Sheila Kernan. Continuing with the west coast themes of her preceding exhibition Real Places, Imaginary Spaces, Kernan delves further into the beguiling beaches and lush coastal forests of British Columbia, uniquely applying Gestalt theory to her process. The result is a collection of immersive, textural scenes replete with the energy of the landscape.
Artist Statement:
Sometimes the in-between isn’t about what’s there; it’s about what is not. Hovering between realism and abstraction, my practice has always embraced “Gestalt theory.” Gestalt theory is a theory about perception: it describes our abilities to recognize complex scenes and reduce them to more simplified patterns and shapes. I aim to reduce scenes and simplify landscapes into shapes, textures and patterns, leaving out some information to allow viewers to fill in the gaps and ‘connect the dots’. At the same time, the many layers within my paintings provide detailed components where we don’t have to use our imagination. This intersection between fantasy and reality is endlessly fascinating to me and perfectly represented in these west coast scenes.
-Sheila Kernan, 2023
Joshua Jensen-Nagle | Summer Session
July 8-20, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday, July 8 2-4pm
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver is pleased to welcome summer 2023 with Summer Session, a collection of immersively-scaled beachside imagery from acclaimed Toronto-based aerial photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle and his ongoing Endless Summer series. Inspired by his abundant memories of summer days surfing with his dad on the New Jersey shore, Jensen-Nagle creates images from a distance that act as memories: captured moments of bliss and solace that call to the viewer to take part in the visual and mental escape. The "escape artist", as Jensen-Nagle was dubbed by the Globe and Mail, photographs beaches in places all over the world including Bondi, Cinque Terre, Capri, Oahu, Mexico and Tel-Aviv.
Artist Statement:
The Endless Summer series explores my obsession with beach culture and the notion of nostalgic escapism, offering a reflection on my own thoughts and feelings of childhood summers spent along the New Jersey shore …memories of never-ending days floating in the water, jumping waves and surfing with my dad. It was a simpler time and one of the only times in my life that I can remember feeling nothing more than uncomplicated happiness. I often long for the simplicity of those days.
My lens is not meant to document a reality, but rather attempts to capture a feeling experienced within the moments photographed, allowing the viewer to then reflect on their own memories and dreams. If the viewer can connect to the work on an emotional level, I have achieved my objective.
– Joshua Jensen-Nagle 2023
Bratsa Bonifacho | No Sugar Added
June 17-29, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday, June 17, 2-4pm | Artist in Attendance
Bratsa Bonifacho is an established artist based in Vancouver. His work is held in many private, corporate and permanent museum collections across five continents. Major collections held include the Canadian Embassy in Argentina, Museum of Modern Art in Serbia, the National Museum of Serbia and the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa.
Internationally recognized for his deeply layered abstract paintings, Bonifacho has an intense interest in technology, communication and cultural identity which is at the forefront of his current artistic practice. These new works are a continuation of his Celebration series. Bonifacho imitates the effects of computer viruses and worms by scrambling letters and messages in his large-scale oil paintings. His work carries the elegance of programming code and symbolizes the deep layers of chaos and confusion caused by viruses, conflict and crisis.
Artist statement:
My choice of title “No Sugar Added” refers to a paring back of frills and unnecessary adornments to reveal the power of simplicity. I have a relationship with each painting which is driven primarily by emotion. This collection picks up from the previous Celebration series, focusing on simplified grid structure and interrupted code-like symbology. However, while the Celebration series focused on an overall presence of white with bright colour accents, this collection features rich, deep colours in combinations which reflect mood and intuitive impulse, emphasizing the all-encompassing importance of the present moment.
– Bratsa Bonifacho 2023
Janna Watson | Skywriting
February 4-18, 2023
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception Saturday, February 4, 2-4pm*
*artist will not be in attendance as planned due to unforseen circumstances
Toronto-based abstract artist Janna Watson has applied her signature elegant-yet-playful, gestural style to an anticipated new series.
Inspired by clouds, the sky, and the Daoist philosophy of Wu Wei, or “effortless action,” Watson explains how she embraces this axiom: “I meditate when I paint and aim to shut out the terrestrial and the pedestrian. I strive to become an equal player of each pigment.”
Regarding her show title Skywriting: “The sky is my muse. It is no-place and all-places, and as a subject matter, it is my connective portal to nature. Unlike landscape, which references the topography of a specific place, the sky is a numinous entity that draws us toward a preeminent power.”
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
Holiday | New Works by Gallery Artists
December 3-17, 2022
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Main Gallery
Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present our annual holiday group exhibition, featuring beautiful new painting and photography in the spirit of the season.
The exhibition includes works by artists including David Alexander, Vicky Christou, Cori Creed, Jamie Evrard, Anne Griffiths, Nicole Katsuras, Gavin Lynch, Andre Petterson and more.
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