Exhibitions

Chris Shepherd | Prophecies 
September 12 - 26, 2020 
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present a selection of new photographs by Toronto-based photographer, Chris Shepherd. Walking city streets for consecutive hours, Shepherd captures the mundane, ordinary, and passed-over with a sense of isolation. In Prophecies, Shepherd photographs the beauty of everyday objects and architecture as they stand still during this unexpected reality.

Shepherd’s work has been exhibited across North America and is included in major corporate collections in Canada. Most recently a number of his works were acquired by the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. 

"The signs are all around us. Never explicitly pointing, never overtly positive or negative. It’s not all doom and destruction or love and laughter, because nothing is ever that simple. Harbingers speak, and those interested interpret. Visions don’t care whether we crave them or cower in fear from them. Portents aren’t reserved exclusively for seers and they don’t always get delivered to those who can read them.  And who really wants to know the unknowable future anyway?

To foretell what might happen requires reflection on the past and an understanding of the present. As a result, the future predicted will be a mirror of our yesterdays and todays. It’s all very confusing.

Prophecies are there for us to read and use, or to pass by and ignore.

The choice is ours."  - Chris Shepherd

VIEW CHRIS SHEPHERD'S COLLECTION

Eric Louie | Finding A Way
September 9 - 22, 2020
3045 Granville St, Vancouver

Vancouver-based painter Eric Louie’s latest exhibition, Finding A Way, introduces a new series of intimate small-scale works that explore ideas of symbolism and semiotics while delving deeper into a new format for his ongoing consideration of imagined spaces.

In his large-scale canvasses, the artist’s distinct future-forward aesthetic and formalist sensibility emerges from his precariously balanced assemblages —  charged with dynamic tension, and rife with colourful shapes — they are at once subject to and defiant of visual gravity. The rich interplay of Louie's forms, shaded with brightly-hued gradients and accented with chrome-like effects, appears both static and in perpetual motion, synthetic-looking yet singularly organic.

With an expanding painterly vernacular inspired by revisiting past works spanning the duration of his practice, Louie's use of symmetry and canonical forms communicate subconscious associations. Ever-present semblances of the familiar, figments of still-lifes, traces of figures and approximations of landscapes emerge from Louie’s evocative compositions, resisting interpretation and beckoning the viewer into the richly layered virtual worlds of his paintings.

Gallery Artists | Method III
August 8-22, 2020
340 and 350 Dundas St W, Toronto

While not always evident, an artist’s ritual and methodology exists as an unseen, yet imperative, part of the artistic process. This August, Bau-Xi Gallery is pleased to present Method III, an annual show highlighting the unique methods and processes behind the work of a select group of artists. Spanning both of our gallery spaces on Dundas Street West, Method III features the work of painters and photographers, and inspires dialogue about the journey taken to arrive at a finished piece.

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Sheila Kernan | This Moment Right Now
August 8 – 22
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver

This Moment Right Now, Calgary-based artist Sheila Kernan's first major exhibition at Bau-Xi Vancouver is a timely engagement with the past and present. 

In this new body of work, Kernan skillfully weaves canonical images and personal narratives, drawing references from the stylized illustrations of classic animation and original photographs to render the boundaries between truth and fiction indiscernible.

Known for her intensely saturated palette and tactile surfaces, Kernan's meticulously composed images begin with large-scale drawings and comprise layered mixed-media elements and gestural impasto.
 
Mediated by the artist's lived experience, distinct sensibility, and richly complex process, Kernan's re-imagining of the Canadian landscape informed by our collective conception of the genre and its source imagery, taking on new and richer depths of meaning with the act of viewing. 

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Michael Kenna | July Feature
July 11-25, 2020
340 Dundas Street West, Toronto

This July, we are thrilled to showcase acclaimed English photographer Michael Kenna’s work at our 340 Dundas Street W location. Kenna’s career spans across four decades, over four-hundred and fifty solo exhibitions and has work included in over a hundred permanent collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; The Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo; The National Gallery, Washington, D.C.; The Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai; and The Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Kenna's signature style is attributed to his long-time exposures – mainly taken at dawn or in the dark hours of the night – which capture the interactions between the natural landscape and human-made structures. The artist's intimate silver-gelatin prints are still hand-processed, and reflect a sense of refinement, demonstrating his appreciation of photographic history that has become a trademark of his artistic approach.

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David Leventi | Social Spaces
June 25 - July 9, 2020
350 Dundas Street W., Toronto

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present a thematic selection of photographs by New York-based photographer, David Leventi. This exhibition explores social spaces, both past and present, featuring photographs of restaurants from the artist’s New York series, and works from his acclaimed series, Palazzi.

Working with 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 inch Arca-Swiss cameras, Leventi captures his architectural subjects in perfect detail. Moreover, his photographs exhibit a masterful sensibility of lighting and composition.

Leventi's photography is included in prestigious private and public collections including The Sir Elton John Collection and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Bau-Xi Vancouver is pleased to present Writing on the Sky, an exhibition of new works by painter Robert Marchessault as part of his ongoing consideration of the graphic possibilities a tree presents when isolated against a spare ground.

Combining his skill in classical painting tradition with his continued interest in painterly abstraction, Marchessault's tree imagery is as firmly rooted in colour fields of loose brushstrokes and washes as they are standing in surreal landscapes.

Marchessault's trees are imagined amalgams spontaneously composed from a series of expressive gestural marks. Drawing from careful observations of his subject matter, the artist deconstructs these organic forms to rearrange their varied twists and shapes into singular specimens of distinctive character — a poignant intimation of human nature. 

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Chase Langford | Geographic Expressionism
June 25 - July 9, 2020
340 Dundas Street W., Toronto

Bau-Xi Toronto is thrilled to present Chase Langford's inaugural Canadian solo exhibition, Geographic Expressionism.

The Californian-based painter invented "geographic expressionism", a distinctive visual language that is grounded in the natural and built environment while embarking into uncharted territory. 

Through cartographic mastery, Langford contorts and synthesizes geographic elements, bringing forth paintings that are mysteriously familiar yet surprisingly unconventional. Challenging conventions of geography and landscapes, the artist offers invigorating visions of space and place that transcend any specific locale, leading us to an exhilarating emotional experience.

Langford’s work is prominently displayed in public, residential, and corporate collections around the globe, including the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Four Seasons in Hong Kong, the Intercontinental Hotel, San Diego, Nordstrom locations worldwide, Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City, and The Art Bank, U.S. State Department in Washington, DC, among many others.