Exhibitions

Joseph Plaskett | Repose
January 13-27, 2024 | EXTENDED through February 1
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday November 18, 2-4pm

Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud and honoured to open 2024 with Repose, a special retrospective solo exhibition from eminent Canadian artist Joseph Plaskett (1918-2014). This collection of oils, pastels and etchings features quietly captivating scenes of interiors and gardens most loved by the artist.

A native of New Westminster, BC, Plaskett studied art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London and Paris. His time in Paris and later years in Suffolk, England (where he passed away in 2014) are the focus of this exhibition, and each work reflects his distinctive mastery of form and composition and a perpetually fresh palette. 

Since the 1940s, Plaskett has had over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with work in major public, private and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Canada. He has exhibited with Bau-Xi Gallery, both in Vancouver and Toronto, since 1973. In the spring of 2001, he was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art.

Join us and explore the intimate and extraordinary world of one of Canada's greatest artists.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.”

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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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