Exhibitions

Sheri Paisley | Kennedy River Rest
Solo Exhibition
October 17-November 1, 2026
Main Level Gallery
3045 Granville Street
Opening reception: Saturday, October 17, 2-4 pm | Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is delighted to present Kennedy River Rest, Canadian artist Sheri Paisley’s latest exhibition inspired by the shifting atmosphere of the Pacific coast. Drawing inspiration from the unexpected beauty of an unassuming highway rest stop along the Kennedy River on Vancouver Island, the artist explores landscape through richly layered colour and her signature expressive pointillist marks, capturing the experience of being immersed in the energy of landscape. 

In March 2026 Paisley was awarded the prestigious Takao Tanabe prize, an annual award given to one selected emerging artist and one mid-career artist based in British Columbia.


Artist statement:

My work explores light, weather, water and atmosphere of the Pacific coast through paint.
I live with aphantasia: I can't experience visual imagery in my mind. Painting offers me a way to visualize. I can organize something outside of myself, look at it over time, deconstruct and reorganize it, and find greater meaning in it that I couldn't access before.

Usually I begin by photo-documenting a place from multiple perspectives. I am drawn to a particular feeling and quality of both landscape and atmosphere. Multiple images and perspectives of one place go into a single painting. From there, I follow the process and the painting becomes its own thing. Colour, marks and layers create variables that I am unable to imagine or predict in advance. I watch for patterns. It is this unfolding process that interests me most.

Painting is a way of sorting and processing life. It gives me somewhere to think and a place to put things. Somewhere to think without having to think in words. I don't always know where a painting is going when I begin. I trust the direction before I fully understand it. That trust is important to me.
Painting has become a way of being in the world. Without it, I’m not sure how I would fully process life experience. 

This body of work began at a rest stop along Highway 4 on Vancouver Island. The Kennedy River Rest Area sits between Port Alberni and the junction for Tofino and Ucluelet. It isn't a destination. I was unexpectedly drawn to it because it offers something I am trying to create in my work: a place to stop, take a break, and then continue.

- Sheri Paisley, 2026


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Celia Lees | Eyes Shut
Inaugural Solo Exhibition in Vancouver
September 12-26, 2026
Upper Gallery
3045 Granville Street
Opening reception: Saturday September 12, 2-4 pm | Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present Eyes Shut, the inaugural exhibition in Vancouver by the dynamic emerging Canadian artist Celia Lees.

An intuitive painter, Lees utilizes high abstraction to articulate emotion, interior thought and lived experience through colour, gesture and mark-making. In this new body of work, Lees explores the act of closing one’s eyes as a means of active selectivity, turning away from the barrage of information that infiltrates contemporary daily life, thereby reclaiming interior space. The new works are aptly minimal and make use of an autumnal palette, elegant staining and considered spare marks, exploring how restraint and selective attention can become visual strategies for enabling quieter space, thought and perception.

Lees' work is held in private collections across North America as well as Europe and Asia. It has also been placed in commercial spaces such as 200 Amsterdam in New York, Aria in Las Vegas, and The Laurel in West Palm Beach.

We are thrilled to welcome the Toronto based artist in person at her inaugural Vancouver opening reception on September 12.


Artist statement:

Eyes Shut considers the act of closing one’s eyes not as withdrawal, but as a deliberate position. Created in response to a culture defined by constant visibility and endless information, the works question the assumption that more knowledge leads to greater clarity; there are forms of knowing that overwhelm rather than illuminate, and forms of unknowing that enable space for intuition and inner conviction.

Rather than advocating ignorance, the paintings propose selectivity - an awareness that not every image, opinion, or experience demands our attention. Closing one’s eyes then becomes an act of agency, creating distance from external influence and making room for a quieter way of seeing. These works occupy the space that exists behind closed eyes, a private interior that belongs only to the individual.

They evoke the experience of inhabiting one’s own mind, where memory, emotion, and imagination dissolve into one another, forming an atmospheric landscape that exists beyond physical observation. In this sense, the paintings are less concerned with representing the external world than with giving form to the internal one, a universe that can only be accessed from within.   -Celia Lees, 2026


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Nicole Katsuras | Atlas
Solo Exhibition
May 9-23, 2026
Main Gallery
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening reception: Saturday May 9, 2-4 pm
Artist In Attendance 

Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Atlas, the new solo exhibition by Canadian artist Nicole Katsuras. With a deep, ongoing influence from the visual and conceptual balance found in Japanese ukiyo-e images, Katsuras incorporates the additional Japanese influence of wabi-sabi in a new collection of elegant impasto works gently suggestive of land formations, balancing precision and spontaneity and infused with a sense of desire for adventure.


Artist Statement:

My new paintings emerge from a dialogue between two foundational pillars of Japanese aesthetics - the visual language of ukiyo-e and the philosophy of wabi-sabi - and my contemporary painterly practice. The works chart a journey, an exploration of forms loosely suggestive of topographical features – craggy peaks, swift rivers and blooming valleys, meandering trails and remote coves. 

The compositions are built upon luminous, hand-dragged oil grounds - fields of flat colour and subtle gradients that echo the spatial clarity and graphic restraint of ukiyo-e prints. These calm, distilled backdrops are disrupted by richly textured impasto forms and paint extrusions in an array of shapes that rise from the surface in organic, almost sculptural relief. My chosen palette reflects an affinity with the harmonies explored by early to mid 20th century Japanese painter Sanzo Wada - unexpected colour juxtapositions evoke a sensitivity to mood and season, while also bridging historical colour systems with a contemporary visual language. Some of the compositions utilize these concepts to joyful, expansive abundance, while others possess a poetic spareness. In its entirety, the collection represents a balance between calculated precision and spontaneous gesture.

While my works suggest natural forms, I do not seek to depict the natural world so much as embody its principles: growth, impermanence, and transformation. I strive to spark an awareness of the world beyond - be it actual or metaphorical - and offer a meditation on how imperfection can be a desired, essential and appreciated element in the construction of beauty.

-Nicole Katsuras, 2026


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Kyle Scheurmann | We Could Have Been a Mountain
Solo Exhibition
April 11-28, 2026
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening reception: Saturday April 11th, 2-4 pm
Artist In Attendance | Artist Talk & Tour 2:15pm

Watch Kyle Scheurmann's artist talk for We Could Have Been a Mountain

Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents We Could Have Been a Mountain, the new solo exhibition by Canadian artist and activist Kyle Scheurmann.

Based on frontline action, three months of field research in British Columbia assisted by conservationists from the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF) and an artist's residency at Island Mountain Arts (IMA) in Wells BC, this new series centers on wildfire, industrial resource extraction, and anthropogenic climate change as its core imagery. Visceral organic additions carefully blended into the artist's oil paints further augment the weight and urgency of the works and the artist's call to awareness.

Kyle Scheurmann will be in attendance at the opening reception of We Could Have Been a Mountain at Bau-Xi Vancouver on Saturday, April 11 from 2-4pm. An artist-led talk & tour will begin at 2:15pm with an introduction by Emilie Carrière of Nature Based Solutions Foundation. 

Kyle Scheurmann gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.




Artist statement:

This exhibition comes at the most crucial time for our environment and my practice in face of the climate crisis. I see my responsibility as an artist, environmentalist, and cultural practitioner as being an accurate and empathetic translator of the realities on the ground in the places most acutely affected by climate change. My practice champions the protection of endangered ecosystems primarily by supporting indigenous-led conservation plans.

Materially, I have collected samples of distressed landscapes to use as painting mediums, such as charred tree and animal remains from wildfires, dried fireweed, sand and crushed stone pigments. Learning to employ diverse organic material into my paint yielded new ways of making lustre, texture and opacity while creating a physical link between the painting on the wall and the lived experience of the land.

-Kyle Scheurmann, 2026


Further insight into Kyle Scheurmann's new work and practice, as observed by art critic, author and activist against systemic violence, Karen Moe:  

The paintings of Kyle Scheurmann’s latest collection, We Could Have Been a Mountain, could have been just beautiful. They could have been landscape paintings celebrating the spirit of the Canadian wilderness in the tradition of the Group of Seven or the West Coast glory a-swirl in the old growth epics of Emily Carr. We Could Have Been a Mountain could have been aesthetic articulations of a love-affair with the land, alive with the natural environment that is distinctively Canadian. And they are. However, unlike Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, these paintings are of a far different time. This is a love affair conflated with a broken heart, painted articulations of what could have been before greed has almost finished its job. Scheurmann paints ecological trauma; however, even as the natural world is obliterated around us, his love and connection to the land is what animates these exquisite reportages of the stories told by the scourge of capital—and the beauty and resistance that persists. 

As an activist, journalist, conservationist and artist who has been a forest defender in old growth forest logging blockades like the Fairy Creek Blockades in 2020-2021, and now, with this new work, investigated sites of the endemic forest fires that have accelerated in his home province of BC and across Canada, Scheurmann’s artwork is passion and subjectivity built upon the bedrock of the painstakingly objective. He analyzes and monitors clearcuts, forest fire burns and the threatened patches of what still stands with the precision of a scientist, photographing, recording GPS coordinates and taking physical samples to his studio as a biologist takes specimens back to their lab. The artist’s site-specific sketches are as subjective samplings and, perhaps most importantly, Scheurmann immerses himself physically and emotively into his subject matter and, as witness and as living creature, the artist becomes a part of his analysis and art. 

“My hands and feet became sticky and ashened,” he reports after investigating the site of a recent forest fire, “as I felt the caramelized sap of freshly burnt branches crumble against my skin.” Along with an endless cycle of intensified love and renewed heartbreak, the artist embodies his earth-muse as his subjectivity becomes a specimen of emotion that he accesses as he paints. Materiality from the sites of the devastation does not only manifest itself on the artist’s skin and within his psyche, however, it literally becomes a part of the artwork. “Slash Pile,” located from the site of what was Sassin Forest on southwest Vancouver Island, contains ashes from the fires that raged and bones of the animals that weren’t able to flee; there is reclaimed iron oxide and oil as evidence of those responsible.

And, in almost all of the paintings, there is sand, earth fire-leeched of the nutrients that once supported millions of living creatures. Like a kid in a chemistry class, the artist whips his paint into meringue-y peaks and adds his ground-up ingredients that he then layers upon heavy linen with the finest possible brushes. Even the dents in the canvas become a part of conversation as these stories are painstakingly inscribed to materialize the pulse of love and outrage.

Mimetic to the land that Scheurmann strives to save through art, these paintings are bodies telling stories of what is still living, at this moment dying, and struggling to be reborn. 

-Karen Moe, 2026


Kyle Scheurmann is a contributor to Karen Moe's second book, Listening, Once Again, to Our Great Mother: The Fairy Creek Blockades and the Life Story of Pacheedaht Elder Bill Jones.

Watch Kyle Scheurmann's artist talk for We Could Have Been a Mountain

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Barbara Cole | Painting with a Camera
Solo Exhibition
March 7-21, 2026
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7, 2-4pm
Artist In Attendance | Artist Talk & Tour 2:15pm


Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents Painting with a Camera, the new solo exhibition by award-winning Canadian photographic artist Barbara Cole and her first solo exhibition in Vancouver since 2017. Painting with a Camera features a special selection of works from Impermanence, Shadow Dancing and Somewhere, three of Cole's recent series and two of which were shot underwater, which together build a compelling and striking narrative of the fluid and ever-changing nature of identity. 

As an innovator in her field, Cole uses both traditional and inventive techniques as part of her ongoing search for timelessness. She has held numerous exhibitions across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Her work has also been extensively commissioned internationally for corporate collections. She has exhibited in the Canadian Embassy in both Tokyo and Washington D.C. The acclaimed documentary series Snapshot: The Art of Photography II, features an episode devoted exclusively to Cole’s photographic practice. She published her book, Between Worlds, with teNeues publishing house in 2023. 

We are thrilled to have Barbara Cole in attendance for her opening reception on Saturday March 7. The artist will present a talk & tour beginning at 2:15pm.

Artist statement:

In these three series, Impermanence, Shadow Dancing, and Somewhere, I use the camera as a paintbrush, creating photographic studies that explore identity, transformation, and the spaces between what is seen and felt.

In Impermanence, the body slips beneath the surface of water and begins to disappear. What remains — fabric, movement, light — becomes the figure. Dresses drift and breathe as if alive, turning fashion into a shifting stand-in for identity itself. Suspended in water, form dissolves and reforms, suggesting that who we are is fluid, something we can inhabit, remix, and release.

Shadow Dancing moves inward. Using the historic wet collodion tintype process layered with subtle color, Cole creates handmade images that feel suspended between centuries. Fragmented figures, partial wardrobes, and headless bodies interact with their own shadows, exploring the quiet tension between our public selves and our private histories. Light and shadow become both metaphor and material, acknowledging that without darkness there is no illumination — and without the past, no becoming.

In Somewhere, play takes center stage. Women drift through dreamlike interiors — chandeliers, marble staircases, gilded mirrors — merging underwater weightlessness with grand architectural space. Time bends, eras collide, and imagination transforms the figure into something unbound. These images inhabit a space between reality and fantasy, where wonder, memory, and possibility coexist.

Together, these series are studies in seeing differently: experiments in light, movement, and perception that blur the line between photography and painting.

-Barbara Cole, 2026


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Ian Stone | A Seat at the Table
Inaugural Solo Vancouver Exhibition
February 7-21, 2026
Upper Gallery
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 7, 2-4pm

Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents A Seat at the Table, the inaugural solo exhibition in Vancouver by Canadian high realist painter and Bau-Xi Gallery's newest artist roster addition Ian Stone.

Stone is a Montreal-based painter whose work explores still life and figuration through the lenses of queer memory, camp, and the aesthetics of collection. Drawing from personal and inherited objects - ornamental, kitsch, and decorative - Stone treats painting as a site of archival reimagining, where objects stand in for histories shaped by desire, longing, and exclusion. His practice is deeply informed by art history, often referencing historical examples and visual strategies, which he reinterprets to speak to contemporary queer experience.

Artist statement:

In A Seat at the Table, I use the language of still life to reconstruct historical spaces - domestic, feminine, and contemplative places where queerness might have quietly persisted. These arrangements of vessels, flowers, butterflies, and flames are not mere objects; they are sites of memory and silence, of what endures and what disappears.

A 16th-century Spanish friar once wrote, “Sodomites are like butterflies, drawn to their own burning.” That image, intended as condemnation, becomes in my work an act of remembrance. The butterflies stand for those who were burned: men whose desire marked them for destruction and whose tenderness was turned against them. Fire, in turn, held a sacred role in early modern thought - it was seen as the purest symbol of divine masculinity. In burning queer bodies, that “divine” fire became a tool of correction, as if to reclaim a masculinity imagined as lost.

In reclaiming the flame, I seek to reverse that violence. The fire in these paintings no longer purifies or condemns - it reveals and transforms. These works exist within the tension between the violence of a world that punishes difference and the passionate self-knowledge that comes from surviving it. Each still life is a meditation on what queerness has brought to the table of history, to our legacy, and our sense of belonging. An insistence that fragility is not weakness.

I draw on archival fragments: trial records that punished effeminacy, poems that celebrated forbidden love, words once spoken only in whispers, and the geographies of persecution themselves. Visiting these sites revealed how memory clings to the ground - how violence leaves its own kind of archive.

A Seat at the Table is not a plea for inclusion, but an assertion of authorship. The work suggests that queerness persists not only in what is preserved, but also in what has been censored, damaged, or half-forgotten. These still lifes are offerings to that persistence - an attempt to hold beauty and loss in the same frame. It asks what happens when those once burned return to the table, carrying with them both the light that tried to destroy them, and the radiance that survived it. 

-Ian Stone, 2025


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