Exhibitions

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 

Opening Reception: Saturday August 10, 2-4 pm

The horizon — the focus of Steven Nederveen’s upcoming exhibition Light Play —is at once both the line where the earth and the sky appear to meet and the limit of a person's mental perception or experience. Engaging with this semantic duality, Nederveen’s panels, too, presents a horizon: the boundary at which the artist and audience make contact.

A measure of scale, time, and distance, the horizon traces a perspective path to meet the eye, marking the level at which the world intersects with the viewer’s gaze. In this body of work, Nederveen subverts this visual formula, displacing the viewer to provoke a deeper scrutiny of the material surface in order to resolve one’s own relation to the picture plane.

As part of his ongoing exploration of the natural environment and the landscape tradition, Nederveen’s evolving practice incorporates photographic technique, painterly brushstrokes and gestural mark-making. The artist’s multi-layered process explores these sites of exchange with in-depth studies of water, panoramic vistas of sky, and immersive scenes of the liminal space between.

The fraught interplay of crashing waves, sea spray, atmospheric dust and refracted light, set against billowing clouds and washes of mountains and coastlines in the distance — is at once mystical and material, static and dynamically changeable, fleeting yet constant. Nederveen’s treatment of his subject matter lends itself to this contextual tension, distressing to transform, obscuring to reveal, and abstracting the representational to invoke the timeless power of the sublime, each painting an invitation to look to the horizon and bear witness to this elemental play.

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

Joseph Plaskett | A Centenary
July 7 - 28, 2018
Running Concurrently at Bau-Xi Vancouver & Toronto
Opening Reception: Saturday July 7, 2-4 pm, Upper Gallery

"The art that I make and that I see others make confirms the miracle of being alive. Almost every day I live in a state of exaltation." - Joseph Plaskett

To commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Joseph Plaskett’s life, Bau-Xi Vancouver and Toronto are pleased to present A Centenary, concurrent exhibitions of select works from the estate of Joseph Plaskett, on view from July 7^th to July 21^st.  

A consummate bohemian, masterful painter and a prolific artist until his passing, Plaskett dedicated his practice to the intimate expression of everyday life: fruits and vegetables artfully scattered about, arrangements of potted plants and fresh flowers, portraits of the artist and his friends, interiors of his Paris apartment and landscapes of his Suffolk garden.

“The word I choose to describe the quality of a still life is intimacy. I am closer and closer to the small world surrounding me and its surroundings. I make constant discoveries.” - Joseph Plaskett

Despite the enduring subject matter throughout Plaskett’s oeuvre —the domestic scenes and humble artifacts of his immediate surroundings — the artist’s treatment of light, colour and form was continually evolving and ever exploratory, shifting from the dramatic contrast and painterly realism of his earlier works to the brightly saturated, graphic forms of his later years, lovingly rendered and infused with warmth and humanity of the artist’s hand.

During his lifetime, Joseph Plaskett became well established for his contribution to Canadian art historical canon, and was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art and inducted as a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. Bau-Xi Galleries are honoured to share this special collection of works with admirers and collectors in celebration of Joseph Plaskett’s art, life, and legacy.

 VIEW THE COLLECTION

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

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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Gallery Artists | PLAY
June 9 - 23, 2018
350 Dundas Street West, Toronto

This month, Bau-Xi is pleased to present a group exhibition titled Play, showing works by gallery artists such as Jeffery Milstein, Barbara Cole, Joshua Jensen-Nagle and Katrin Korfmann.

From Jeffrey Milstein's striking aerial shots of Disneyland, to Katrin Korfmann's composed scenes of children playing against brightly coloured backgrounds, this exhibition is curated around themes of recreation and playfulness. The bright colour palettes that characterize these works also impart a sense of joy; pops of pink and turquoise can be found along the shorelines of Joshua Jensen-Nagle's sandy beaches, and the primary hues of Barbara Cole's Petit Prince works are reminiscent of the simplicity and joy of childhood.

Visit Bau-Xi Photo from June 9-23 to see this incredible exhibition. Click here to view the photography collection. 

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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