Exhibitions

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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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
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.

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.  

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.