Exhibitions

George Byrne | Block Colour
October 13 - November 4, 2018
3045 Granville St, Vancouver
Artist's Reception: October 18th, 6-8 pm, Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to introduce Sydney-born, Los Angeles-based photographer George Byrne to our artist roster. Byrne’s inaugural exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver, Block Colour explores the graphic simplicity of architectural form and light across different neighbourhoods in Los Angeles.

Byrne started photographing Los Angeles with a medium format camera in 2010. Mostly devoid of human presence, the photographs in Block Colour capture the serendipity of the everyday urban experience stripped down to its bare elements. Byrne’s close-crop photos, often taken from the middle of the street, show careful attention to the geometric fragments of his urban surroundings revealed in subtle line and unexpected shadow which cut across pastel walled surfaces, and divide soft sky from gritty stucco, plastic and concrete.

From afar, Byrne’s vibrant compositions resemble abstract paintings. His reduction of architectural form to their purest elemental shape and block of colour harken to Henri Matisse’s cut-outs. His flattened cityscapes recall the modernist paintings of Richard Diebenkorn with their clean lines and flat, formal components. Soft-hued and complementary colour combinations evoke playfulness and lighthearted humour, punctuated by not-so hard-edge lines, slabs of concrete and peeking palm trees. Byrne’s work encapsulates not only the spirit of his adopted city’s unique and diverse cityscape, but an aesthetic sensibility that has come to be ubiquitous with our globalized visual culture influenced by equal parts art history and Instagram.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

George Byrne was born in Sydney, Australia in 1976 and graduated from Sydney College of the Arts in 2001. He has exhibited internationally in Italy, India, Australia, and New York. In 2010, Byrne relocated to Los Angeles, California where he continues to live and work today. 

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Jamie Evrard | Source of Light
September 8-22, 2018
340 Dundas St West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8, 2-4 pm - Artist in Attendance 

In Source of Light, Jamie Evrard embraces a new consciousness of light and delves deeper into her floral subject; abstracting its structure and form.

Evrard’s process has her actively engage with past and present work, sparking intuitive compositions which speak to each other within a balanced body of work. Created with a fast, reflexive hand, each of Evrard's canvases become a document of her process; emblematic of the destruction and creation inherent to both the artist's practice and the subject itself.

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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Anthony Redpath | DISTILLED
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto 
September 8-22, 2018
Opening reception: Saturday, September 8, 2-4pm. Artist in attendance. 

This September Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present DISTILLED, a new body of work by Vancouver-based photographer Anthony Redpath. Following his acclaimed RE-FINED series, the artist continues to explore the industrial edifices of the West Coast, visually mining a landscape that is rooted in its industrial history. Redpath positions his lens at a close range, and crops and recomposes his subjects in post-production, distilling them into a series of abstracted planes of shape and texture. “Striving for ultimate graphic simplicity can help communicate an idea in the most arresting way,” Redpath states.

Redpath draws influence most notably from Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typologies, Andreas Gursky’s meticulously detailed images of the modern world, the rich textural detail of Gerhard Richter’s scraped paintings, and the graphic industrial depictions by Lewis Baltz in the “New Topographics” exhibition. Captivating to the viewing from a distance, Redpath’s compositions, upon closer inspection, conjure themes of perception, industry, socio-politics and the environment.

Join us Saturday, September 8 from 2-4pm to celebrate the opening of DISTILLED and to meet the artist. The exhibition will be on view until September 22.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COLLECTION 

Sheri Bakes | Open the World
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
September 8-22, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 8, 2-4PM

Open the World is a body of work inspired by a farm on Vancouver Island. 

The title stems from a painting that was made upon arriving to this farm and depicts a heavily abstracted opening of light through a forest of trees along a fleshy coloured rain soaked muddy path. 

Marshall McLuhan wrote, "I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning System that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it." 

Part of the interest in making this show has been to explore and trace out an opening; a light-line thread of hope through McLuhan's thoughts on art as a 'distant early warning system.' 

These works are simply meditations on light, movement and somatic, tactile experience in nature. 

VIEW THE SHERI BAKES COLLECTION

Gallery Artists | A Deeper Shade of Blue
Bau-Xi Gallery Vancouver
July 7 - 28, 2018
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 7, 2-4PM

Casey McGlynn | War Horse
July 7-21, 2018
340 Dundas St West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 7, 2-4 pm - Artist in Attendance

This July, Bau-Xi Gallery will be presenting the newest paintings by Canadian artist Casey McGlynn.

Created using a range of techniques and collage elements, McGlynn’s paintings are visual composites of autobiography and collective memory; at once literal and endlessly symbolic.

War Horse will prominently feature the artist’s distinctive and symbolic renderings of the horse, with the majestic animal serving as a vessel for visual expressions of McGlynn’s personal history; rich with both stories and warnings concerning the state of the world we share. Highly referential images—historical and political figures, popular media, textual documents—narrate scenes, while also prompting the viewer’s imagination through allegory and archetype.

McGlynn’s works can be found in a number of private and public collections in both Canada and the US. Most recently his work was acquired for the HBC Global Art Collection in New York.

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Summer Focus Exhibition | Virginia Mak
July 7-21, 2018
350 Dundas St West, Toronto

This July, Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present a group exhibition, with a special feature on Untitled, the latest series by Toronto-based photographer Virginia Mak. This body of work is characterized by Mak's distinctive off-focus lens, which allows her to create abstract character studies that blur the boundary between painting and photography. 

Born in Hong Kong, Virginia Mak has received multiple degrees in both liberal and fine arts. She has exhibited extensively across Canada where her work has received multiple awards, as well as project, exhibition and travel grants from the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her photographs can be found in public and private collections in Hong Kong and North America.  

CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIRGINIA MAK'S COLLECTION

Janna Watson | Patterns of Up and Down
June 9-23, 2018
340 Dundas St West, Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 9, 2:00 - 4:00 pm, Artist in Attendance

The Bau-Xi Gallery in Toronto will be presenting the newest body of work from painter Janna Watson, in a solo exhibition entitled ‘Patterns of Up and Down’. Janna Watson's compelling abstract compositions use colour, line, and energetic brushstrokes to evoke emotion in the viewer. Her work possesses an elegant and powerful energy, created with a carefully balanced pairing of loose painting and gestural mark-making. Watson's paintings are altogether honest and confident, vulnerable and evocative portraits of colour, texture, space, and movement.

Watson’s work can be found in several significant collections including the TD Bank Financial Group, CIBC, Nordstrom, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. The Toronto-based artist has exhibited across Canada and internationally.

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Artist Statement | Patterns of Up and Down 

Over the past several months, I've been painting in my studio and contemplating the act of being versus the act of doing. "To be" is to have a conscious existence whereas "to do" is the act of performing. In other words, getting up and lying down is something that we all do in our day-to-day, and being up and being down is inside the emotional daily pattern of our lifestyle. These actions have been internalized then externalized through Patterns of Up and Down, and each painting can be seen as a part of me. I like to look at these pieces individually as daily entries of my aesthetic-journal.

I recently visited the AGO to see Mitchell/Riopelle: Nothing in Moderation. I was inspired by one particular work by Joan Mitchell where she wanted to convey the feeling of a dying sunflower. Like this flower, my painting is mutually linked to life's ups and downs, and so too are my titles; they are equally a part of me as the visual work itself. From moments where my acupuncturist said Eating Flowers is Good For Eyesight (particularly chrysanthemums) and realizing how painting Upside Down is a Whole New Way of Seeing, I am conveying my inner world and sharing my reality through abstracted forms.

Toronto was affected by the longest winter which got us all down. I walked to my studio in the April ice storm thinking about Mitchell's way of seeing and along these lines I painted Late Spring Feels Like Being Buried Alive. She changed the way I interpret light, colour, and emotions. Mitchell said “I paint from remembered landscapes that I carry with me – and remembered feelings of them, which of course become transformed. I could certainly never mirror nature. I would more like to paint what it leaves with me." Reading this was comforting. I hope that my interpretation of nature affects my viewers though their own unconscious realities.

Janna Watson, 2018