Exhibitions

Nicole Katsuras | Painter's Paradise
November 9 - 23, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, November 9, 2019, 2-4 PM

Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present Painter's Paradise, Toronto-based artist Nicole Katsuras' first exhibition in Vancouver in over 5 years.

Nicole Katsuras’ approach embraces various past traditions in art history while attempting to create a new formal vocabulary for her creative endeavors. Informed by the nuances of the oil medium and a plethora of visual stimulus, Katsuras’ extruded paint technique operates in tandem with her open-ended source material to compose evocative images that collapse simplistic distinctions of genre to transcend the inherent limits of pictures.

An interest in aesthetic semantics and systems of meaning propels Katsuras' experimentation in mark-making to create an expanding visual language of extrusions, brushstrokes and other varied applications. Developed around the notion of an ‘ideal’ or ‘Utopian’ space where the physical and intangible transcend picture-making, Katsuras' points of departure are manifold. 

Tracing the pedagogical connections of Joan Mitchell and Pia Fries while aligning herself with their distinct stylistic lineage, Katsuras also draws from diverse influences spanning the likes of Monet for his depiction of light, Van Gogh and Bonnard for their technique with colour, and Hofmann's use of spatial illusion. Katsuras also credits her exposure to the unrestrained approaches of Mary Heilmann and Thomas Nozokowski, which allowed the artist license to paint without reservations.

With her high impasto, jewel-like palettes and organic forms, the artist's practice speaks to a persistent underpinning force, one which expands through exuberant gestures outward from the two-dimensional space of her canvasses. Katsuras' gradient, multi-tone surfaces and interacting forms shift focus on the picture plane. Functioning at once as abstract interpretations of the psyche and observational remarks on the harmony of proportion, value and texture, Katsuras' compositions render palpitating spatial tensions with dynamic movements, voluptuous lines and frenetic streaks of colour which layer to build toward a sublime release. 

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Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present Pattern Recognition, a group exhibition featuring works by Bratsa Bonifacho, Kim Keever, Vicky Christou, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, Janna Watson, Katrin Korfmann, George Byrne, with a special focus on New York-based artist Jeffrey Milstein's aerial photographs.

Painter Bratsa Bonifacho uses order, dis-order and geometric grids in his typographic exploration of sign processes and modes of visual communication, while photographers George Byrne and Katrin Korfmann both utilize composite imagery to subvert the mimetic nature of the photo medium and to act as an intervention with the its relation to a distinct time and space.

Toronto-based photographer Chris Shepherd formulates sculptural assemblages which realize a coterminous hybridity as both construction material and art object. Kim Keever incorporates the element of chance in his large scale works by pouring paints into water to create fluid, evocative compositions.

This curated selection of meticulously constructed and highly detailed artworks reflect the ways in which the photographic lens or painter’s brush activates their respective subject matter. Milstein abstracts familiar landmarks and built environments through the immediacy of flattened depths and the remove of heightened perspective, to prompt a reduction of form into geometric designs of shapes and graphic patterns of pure color.

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Tom  Burrows | The Curve of Time
October 5-19, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto - Upper Floor Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto is pleased to present the continuation of The Curve of Time, an exhibition of work by renowned Canadian artist Tom Burrows. For the last 30 years, Burrows has been committed to exploring the medium of cast pigment polymer resin focusing on colour fields. The panels included in this exhibition recall and reflect the geography of a coast peopled for untold millennia in the curve of time.

The Curve of Time borrows its name from the eponymous memoir of M. W. Blanchet. Following the disappearance of her husband, Blanchet and her children lived aboard a vessel to allow for the summer rental of the family’s onshore home. Blanchet's travel log commences in 1926 and recounts the fifteen summers she spent cruising the British Columbia coast in a small gasoline-powered launch with her five children.

Blanchet’s The Curve of Time served as a catalyst for Burrows, whose eight-meter boat, Caprice spurred the artist to acquire his own vessel which he fondly named Gina Marie. The artist's journey under the sail of Gina Marie culminates in a lucid picture of life afloat complex tidal waters.

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David T. Alexander | Landscape Considerations and Imagined Dialogues
October 5-19, 2019
340 Dundas St West, Toronto - Main Floor Gallery
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 5, 2:00 - 4:00pm

Throughout his fifty-year career, David Alexander has created powerful works depicting the Canadian landscape, as well as abstracted water reflections bursting with intensity and drama. His varied subjects are portrayed through the use of unconventional washes, gestural brushstrokes, and carefully placed scrapes. The final paintings are imbued with an energetic originality and authenticity.

The paintings in this show illustrate Alexander’s continued fascination with craggy, rough, shadowed wilderness. Peculiar trees stand like twisted scarecrows; impassible thickets seem full of mystery and intrigue, and pools of water mirror the sky and trees beyond view and invite us to look deeper.

David Alexander is deeply motivated by landscape. “Wandering” through the land is intrinsic to his process and allows him to thoroughly experience the place he is exploring. While wandering, Alexander takes photographs and creates sketches to document his trips, which develops an even deeper understanding of the land. Coupled with his personal engagement with the location, this documentation serves to capture the feeling of a place as opposed to helping aid a literal translation of the landscape.

Returning to this immersive experience several times – sometimes after many years – allows Alexander to witness the effect a different perspective, changing light, as well as human and environmental impact, can have on the land. This deep knowledge of the landscape is successfully conveyed in his paintings. The nature of Alexander’s line and brushstroke application invites the viewer to look closely to examine the scene thoroughly. We are given the opportunity to absorb the artist’s impression of the land, and also carefully explore the scene ourselves.

As an audience, we experience a David Alexander painting as if we are being told a story – a combination of narrative and record. This story is revealed to the viewer as their eyes journey around the painting’s surface, guided by Alexander’s distinctive and uniquely recognizable strokes.

Through exploration and intimate study, Alexander’s lyrical work transcends the specificity of location and manifests as something new and entirely his own. Part refinement, part embellishment, the interactions occurring in his paintings make them an event rather than strictly a landscape. The final pieces in this collection beautifully express the drama of the subject Alexander explored.

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Steven Nederveen | Moments of Intrigue 
September 14-28, 2019
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 14, 2-4 PM. Artist in Attendance

"You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here." 
— Alan Watts

Bau-Xi Toronto is thrilled to present an all-new exhibition by Toronto-based artist, Steven Nederveen. In Steven Nederveen’s newest series, Moments of Intrigue, the artist aims to capture the mesmerizing qualities of water and light. Nederveen states that “water embodies both the light and the heavy of personal journeys. I wanted this emotional quality to be at the forefront, and chose the thick application of paint for its unfiltered directness.”

Steven Nederveen's work is featured internationally in galleries, art fairs, magazines, and many private collections. He studied fine art at Medicine Hat College and went on to receive a Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta in 1995. His studio is currently based out of Toronto.

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Barbara Cole | SURFACING
September 12-28, 2019
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12, 5-7pm. Artist talk with Anna Maria Tremonti at 6pm.

SURFACING, the latest series by Toronto-based artist Barbara Cole, represents triumph, survival and self-actualization. Set against a vast and tumultuous ocean-scape, this series depicts shimmering figures rising triumphantly towards the surface. This series is fueled by Cole's personal history, and the ethereal figures shown are a celebration of power of will and strength to overcome.

Cole expertly captures the beauty and dynamism of the human form moving through water, a reference to overcoming the obstacles which bring us ultimately toward resilience, and a place of true empowerment. SURFACING is the embodiment of what it means to rise and conquer. 

While this series has a personal undertone for Cole, the female subjects are not purely self-referential; they also refer to the many women who prevail through the daily turmoil of assault, depression, other mental health issues, as well as the stigma that often accompany them.

With this series, Cole aims not only to open a dialogue on mental health but also to let those suffering in silence know that there are effective resources available to them. Cole has partnered with organizations Bell Let’s Talk and the Campaign to Change Direction in an effort to further their initiatives in spreading awareness and destigmatizing mental health issues, and to advocate for important and useful links and resources. 

These pictorial metaphors echo my own struggles as well as the realization of my personal and artistic aspirations. These are women who are taking back power and leading the way.

SURFACING will be on view at 350 Dundas St W from September 12-28, 2019. Join us to celebrate the opening on Thursday, September 12th from 5-7pm, and hear Barbara Cole in conversation with renowned journalist Anna Maria Tremonti at 6pm as they discuss the importance of mental well-being. 

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HER | Group Exhibition
August 10-24, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 10, 2019, 2-4 PM

Her brings together and celebrates the works of four women artists, comprised of two painters and two photographers, who have each become recognized for their respective representations of the female form.
 
Painter Darlene Cole’s lyrical and poetic renditions of solitary figures or small gathering of females in various stages of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood evoke a sense of memory or fleeting experience. The paintings for Her depict figures immersed in an intimate moment.

In her Falling Through Time series, photographer Barbara Cole emphasizes dynamism and power of the female form in movement and a seamless catapulting back and forth between future and past self in time and technique.
In Barbara Cole’s Meditation series, a restrained atmosphere of stillness and contemplation pervades.
 
Like Barbara Cole, painter Vicki Smith also concentrates on the female form as it moves through water. Her swimmers evoke a feeling of freedom and expansiveness and a possibility for transformation as they calmly float or swim in lakes and swimming pools.
 
Photographer Virginia Mak’s soft-focus images from her Composed Series in this exhibition pay homage to the creative women in her life while her Stillness series turns a more inward gaze towards self-reflection and growth.
 
The exhibition seeks to provide ‘a room of one’s own’ to highlight the multiplicity of views on the female form by four strong female artists.

Sheila Kernan | Forever Is A Feeling
August 10-24, 2019
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 10, 2019, 2-4 PM, Artist in Attendance

Forever Is A Feeling marks emerging Calgary-based painter Sheila Kernan's inaugural exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver. Known for her intensely saturated palette and tactile surfaces, Kernan's meticulously composed images begin with large-scale drawings and photo-montages drawn from references collected over a ten-year span and comprise skillfully layered mixed-media elements and gestural impasto.

In Forever Is A Feeling, Kernan remarks on time — its inevitable passage and the myriad ways in which we keep it— and memory, in its capacity as living record and capricious witness. Kernan's engagement with these themes emerge through her practice in various ways: her preparatory collages become disparate visual memories, rearranged piecemeal; the gradual accumulation, blending and erasing of her dry brush technique echo acts of forgetting and remembrance, while her intricate hand-cut stencils and their graphic forms evoke the omitting and softening effects of recollection.

Mediated by the artist's lived experience, distinct sensibility, and richly complex process, Kernan's re-imagining of the Canadian landscape as a constructed space is informed by our collective conception of the genre and its source material, taking on new and richer depths of meaning with the act of viewing. Through interactions with her personal history, Kernan endeavors to fix the fleeting instant and the sense of infinitude captured within it by rendering tangible, immutable paintings which invoke those singular moments in time.

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