Gordon Wiens | Nature Transformed

Gordon Wiens | Nature Transformed
June 9-23
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 16, 2-4 pm 
Held in conjunction with the 7th Annual South Granville ArtWalk
Saturday June 16th, 10 am - 5 pm - Artist in Attendance

Gordon Wiens’ acrylic paintings are largely inspired by the imperfect beauty and impermanence of decaying objects found in nature. Wiens uses an intuitive approach to his layering of texture, colour and form. Wiens’ material erosion of paint mimics nature’s elements as the artist’s forms are fragmented through the act of pulling and erasure.  Multiple layers of forms and lines are added, covered and altered. Through the artist’s process of painting, a subtle transformation occurs. A vestige of each layer remains to illustrate the understated and undefinable qualities of the transient beauty of nature.


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Joshua Jensen-Nagle | Endless Summer

Joshua Jensen-Nagle | Endless Summer
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
May 5 - 19
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 24, 2-4PM

In his acclaimed series Endless Summer, Canadian photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle continues to­­ capture aerial images of sunbathed beaches around the world, transforming crowds of people into toy-like figures set against sublime natural backdrops.

Approaching the medium of photography as a “means to evoke emotion rather than document a reality”, Jensen-Nagle’s beach-goers in repose evoke a collective reminiscence, sparking personal associations that might resemble the artist’s own nostalgia for a “childhood spent on the shore… memories of never-ending days floating in the water, jumping waves.”

Jensen-Nagle’s bird’s-eye view and immersive, large-scale format disturbs one’s sense of depth and perspective to abstract these familiar sites of leisure; dramatic visual patterns emerge from the photographic surface: colourful umbrellas form recurring motifs, swimmers afloat become the material of choice for the artist’s mark-making, poised between the painterly washes of sand and surf demarcating these compositions.

Beyond their evocative potential and arresting imagery, Joshua Jensen-Nagle’s scenes inspire a dialogue revolving around the nuanced spatial history of the beach. The effect of this imaging is multifold, a study of topographical and ecological tensions between the boundaries of land and sea; a liminal space between nature and civilization, the familiar and unknown. Situated in this intersectional space, Jensen-Nagle examines the ways in which humanity inhabits these environments at the furthest reaches of the earth; ruminating upon the nature and evolution of leisure and its place in the breakneck pace of our everyday lives.

 

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Jamie Evrard | Brief Splendours


Jamie Evrard | Brief Splendours

March 3-17, 2018
3045 Granville St, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 3, 2:00 - 4:00pm, Artist in Attendance

Brief Splendours, an exhibition of paintings by Jamie Evrard on view at Bau-Xi Gallery this March, describes both the brevity of a flower's beauty and the elusive discoveries that punctuate the artist’s creative process. Striking and imbued with poetic movement, Evrard's loose, gestural brushstrokes and diaphanous layers of colour, limned by tracery accents, emerge from the paint surface as wholly formed arrangements.

Beyond the exploration of this singular theme, Evrard’s florals act as a vehicle for the incorporation of elements inspired by watercolour staining and sketch-like mark-marking. Her florals become both subject matter and catalyst for Evrard's passionate experimentation with the oil medium, from which has emerged a deft hand and remarkable ease with paint. 

Evrard’s liberal interpretation of her source material coincides with the turning of the artist's gaze inward to relentlessly examine herself as an artist. Much like journal entries, Evrard's compositions often begin in the upper left to make an organic progression across the canvas, which act as a personal record of her practice, documenting her numerous forays into abstraction and formal experimentation. Writ large on the open faces of peonies and roses, this seminal body of work is a testament to a career dedicated to the pursuit of Brief Splendours.
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Janna Watson | Light is Heavy

Janna Watson | Light is Heavy
January 13-27, 2018
3045 Granville St, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Light is Heavy presents a diverse body of work from contemporary abstract painter Janna Watson—a visually poetic culmination of her practice to date. In this suite of paintings the artist explores the paradoxical weight of light and lightness through the reactive materiality of mixed media.

Evident in these latest works is the maturation of Watson's artistic process, as her panels reveal renewed confidence and technical mastery of her distinct painterly language. Watson’s works are endlessly evocative of organic forms, populated by familiar figures and rife with art historical reference— at once inviting subjective meaning whilst resisting easy interpretation and the stasis of representation.

Watson's coalescing forms are suspended mid-motion and contain within them an expressive cacophony: marbled, multi-hued brushstrokes are juxtaposed against bold, gestural streaks to maintain precarious equilibrium. Stark ink lines inscribe the pictorial plane of Watson’s panels—disturbing profusions of calligraphic strokes and contrasted with sporadic rushes of pure colour. All punctuated by decisive pastel markings and unfolding on a gradient and richly hued surface, oft delineated by the dynamic introduction of a horizon line. Each piece is a deeply nuanced and profoundly personal undertaking, composed of singular moments of paint and informed by a great depth of feeling, manifested in the application of each individual element.

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Mel Gausden | Girls Gone Wild



Mel Gausden | Girls Gone Wild
January 13-27, 2018
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 13, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Canadian landscape painting has mythologized the great outdoors through the work of Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson and David Milne. Emerging artist Mel Gausden marks a departure from the Canadian landscape tradition—a genre historically dominated by male painters—by centralizing the experience of women in nature, and her own in Girls Gone Wild, the artist's inaugural exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver.

Typically overlooked in traditional landscape painting, Gausden's canvases feature women as outdoors people: active participants who build fires, climb fences, and carry their own canoes. Her female subjects, often situated or leaving evidence of their trace, discover themselves within the natural environment in which they gather, explore and commune.

The visual culture of our contemporary digital age informs Gausden's unconventional palette. Neon silhouettes and brightly hued accents take reference from pre-set Instagram camera filters, fashion and consumer trends. The artist's manipulation of oil paint varies from sculptural— bending and piling thick layers of paint into matchsticks of textured impasto—to painterly— diluting paint until it drips with controlled precision— to sketchlike with her mark-making. For Gausden, the act of painting is intuitive as much as it is intentional; an exploratory act of personal and cultural identity which fuses past and present influences to create new possibilities for representation.

 

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JAMIE EVRARD | RESTLESS SPRING

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.  

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JANNA WATSON | SOMETHING IN THE AIR

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.

 

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CASEY MCGLYNN | DOMESTIC ANIMALS

CASEY MCGLYNN | Domestic Animals

January 21 - Feb 2, 2017
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

Nostalgia, poignancy, and the magnificent innocence that characterize Casey McGlynn's style of drawing and mixed media paintings continue into a colourful, multilayered documentation of life. In Domestic Animals, McGlynn integrates his memory and his present family state: paintings include different settings of home, of house, the covers of specific editions of each book that McGlynn has ever read.

Domestic Animals speaks to both exterior and interior domestic landscapes, signifying an anticipation of the future. Varying from his previous works, McGlynn’s Domestic Animals reveals the tension between responsibility, stability, and the child within. 

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PAT O'HARA | LINEARITY

PAT O'HARA | Linearity
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
January 7 - 18, 2017

From her more representative works of snowy scenes, to soft patterns of concentric lines, and pastel hues, Pat O’Hara’s recent paintings explore the motif of strings, but with a higher velocity: strokes are soft and bright, simultaneously explosive and strong. There is visible confidence in the artist's choice of bold colours, while her inclusion of playful accents on white and black strands stand out among the varying chroma, giving these paintings a sense of grounding. Experiments with resin add luminosity and dimension to her work.

Enriched by the shades of forest, sea, and nature, Linearity demonstrates a sense of certainty and assertion in O'Hara's artistry.

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