Exhibitions

SUMMER FOCUS EXHIBITION: Virginia Mak

Bau-Xi Photo, Toronto
August 12-31, 2017

Join us this August for our group exhibition, which focuses on work by Virginia Mak. Fostered through a deep-rooted fascination with fictional characters, Virginia Mak infuses her photographic work with poetic references to icons from classic literature, folklore and mythology. By staging scenarios around illustrious story lines and characters, Mak aims to visually depict familiar figures and re-interpret the narrative. Known for its soft focus and minimized light values, her work disrupts the boundary between painting and photography.

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION | CANDY

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION | CANDY
3045 Granville Street
August 12 - 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 12th from 2-4 PM

Candy, a mass-produced, high-fructose delicacy of unnatural sweetness, colour and form has been a popular indulgence since the Industrial Revolution. Our ongoing affection for the novel treat, valued more for enjoyment than its nutritional value, guides Bau-Xi’s selection of bright artwork in high gloss finishes and delicious surface texture to evoke the senses.

For its annual August Group show, Bau-Xi Gallery presents CANDY, a curated exhibition of selected work by gallery artists. CANDY will explore the various synonyms and complexities inherent in our relationship with the decadent treat. As a euphemism for sex, works by Janna Watson and Kathryn Macnaughton reference the body as a site of pleasure and physical consumption. With a nod to Pop Art’s exploration of the beauty and dark side of mass consumption, popular culture and kitsch, CANDY will shed light on the confection’s allure - gluttony, addiction, nostalgia and artifice through painters Pat O’Hara, Janna Watson, Alex Cameron, Steven Nederveen and photographers Joshua Jensen-Nagle, and Heidi Leverty.

Whether you like it coated, spun, crystallized or melted, join Bau-Xi Gallery this August for CANDY: a sugar high journey through art.

SUMMER FOCUS EXHIBITION: Joshua Jensen-Nagle

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION with focus on Joshua Jensen-Nagle's Photo London selection
Presented at Bau-Xi Photo, Toronto
July 8-22, 2017

Toronto photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle had a tremendous showing last month at Photo London. The artist sold out several editions of his sought-after beach imagery, and was recognized in publications including The Telegraph, National Geographic and The Londonist.

Top 5 'Must-See Photographers at Photo London'
Brian May's Top 20 photographs of Photo London
Studio tour article by 'Curated by Creatives'

SUMMER GROUP EXHIBITION AT BAU-XI TORONTO

Join us this July at Bau-Xi Toronto for our summer group exhibition featuring work by Kathryn Macnaughton, Andre Petterson, Bratsa Bonifacho, Tom Burrows, Steven Nederveen, Erin Armstrong, Jamie Evrard, Darlene Cole, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, Robert Marchessault, Janna Watson, Cori Creed, and Robert Cadotte.

ERIN ARMSTRONG / KATHRYN MACNAUGHTON | DUALITIES: A BRIDGE BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

ERIN ARMSTRONG / KATHRYN MACNAUGHTON | Dualities: A Bridge Between Two Worlds
3045 Granville Street
July 8 - 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 8th from 2-4 PM

Toronto female painters Erin Armstrong and Kathryn Macnaughton converge in Dualities: A Bridge Between Two Worlds, marking a fresh and exciting direction in contemporary Canadian painting.

In Dualities: A Bridge Between Two Worlds, both Erin Armstrong and Kathryn Macnaughton demonstrate an interest in form and interiority. Erin Armstrong’s anonymous figures inhabit a world of speculative fiction witnessed by Kathryn Macnaughton’s static houseplant, a stand-in for the body which bears witness to narratives outside of, and within it.

As vessels into an alternative space, Kathryn Macnaughton’s abstract paintings balance minimal shapes with colour and draw influence from principles of graphic design, Art Deco architecture and Colour Field abstraction. Flat, sculptural shapes are layered between stained and textured coloured backgrounds which create a sense of movement and depth. Similarly, Erin Armstrong generates imagined realms where ambiguous bodies hang about languidly in offbeat locales as if from a distant dream. Bodies and faces are discretely revealed and concealed by expressive applications of paint to hint at subtle emotions and complex inner worlds.

CASEY MCGLYNN | IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD

CASEY MCGLYNN | It's Not the End of the World

340 Dundas St. W, Toronto
June 3 - 17, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday June 3, from 2-4 PM

Casey McGlynn’s paintings are visual composites of autobiography and collective memory, at once literal and endlessly symbolic. Highly referential images—animals, people, popular media, textual documents—narrate scenes from the artist’s life while also prompting the viewer’s imagination through allegory and archetype. Working with a combination of techniques, McGlynn imbues this timeless visual repertoire with contemporary life: adventurous explorations of colour, humour, and satire are delivered with what Gary Michael Dault, writing for the Globe and Mail, called “a warm and somehow compassionate abandon.” Indeed, McGlynn’s compositions capture life’s chaos while also allowing his viewer the contemplative space to insert his or her own story.

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.

SUMMER FOCUS EXHIBITION: ANTHONY REDPATH

GROUP SHOW WITH SUMMER FOCUS EXHIBITION ON ANTHONY REDPATH
350 Dundas St. W, Toronto
June 3 - 26, 2017

Back by popular demand, Redpath's large scale photographs, including the lightbox image of 'Separation and Conversion' will be installed here at Bau-Xi Photo, Toronto. The treatment of Redpath's subjects entices the viewer to go beyond the documentary style and examine closely the surface sensuality and rich palette of a decaying landscape. Redpath positions his lens at close range to distill his subjects into a series of abstracted planes of shape and texture. Further enhanced by the complex ribbing, vaulting and rustication of the sugar refinery, pulp mills, and oil refinery that comprise the series, Redpath's attention to detail reveals the effects of time on these monolithic architectural subjects. Works in RE-FINED are technical, beautiful images which respond to shifting understandings about industry as an important feature of the Canadian landscape.

Bau-Xi Photo, Toronto is open daily from 10am-5:30pm, directly across from the Art Gallery of Ontario.

DAVID T. ALEXANDER | Land and Mindscape : Perceptions and Sensations

DAVID T. ALEXANDER | Land and Mindscape : Perceptions and Sensations
June 10 - 24, 2017
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 10 from 2-4 PM | Artist in attendance

Celebrated painter David T. Alexander ignites the long tradition of Canadian landscape painting in Land and Mindscape : Perceptions and Sensations with a painterly force and reverence. The exhibition recalls the artist’s time as a participant and workshop leader at the influential Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop in Saskatchewan among the likes of Kenneth Noland, Clement Greenberg and Jules Olitski.

Alexander’s wet series explores water as form by combining luminous color with flattened, uncanny perspective. Reflective pools, elusive ripples and subtle shifts of light and glare are punctuated by tall, vertical reeds which culminate into richly painted surfaces that oscillate between pure abstraction and recognizable natural forms. In his dry series, Alexander continues his interest in evoking dramatic horizon lines, textured craggy terrain and cliff faces with a loose yet decisive painterly hand. Brazen brushwork and localized color create shifting moments that recall the artist’s lived experiences within the varied, rugged landscapes of Canada, Iceland and the United States.

In Land and Mindscape : Perceptions and Sensations Alexander demonstrates that his investigation of landscape is by no means exhaustive. “These water paintings remind us all that our views of the landscape are always reflections – and they are fragmented and constricted,” shares Alexander. Alexander’s paintings, with their enigmatic, often curious and illustrative titles, leave clues for the viewer to contemplate the fraught nature of landscape as a resource, as a space of memory, as a source of life in all its sublime wonder.

ANDRE PETTERSON | RECONNOITRE

ANDRE PETTERSON | Reconnoitre
340 Dundas St. W, Toronto
May 6 - 31, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6 from 2-4 PM

This May, Bau-Xi Toronto presents Reconnoitre, an exhibition of new work by Andre Petterson. These mixed media works offer both new and familiar motifs for which Petterson has become known: suit jackets, typewriters, and pianos— objects loaded with symbolic charge—are subject to a unique process that combines photography, paint, and all the conceptual implications that this pairing of mediums incites. “The thread that always feeds me,” says Petterson, “is the desire to tell a story,” and works in Reconnoitre are indeed powerfully narrative in their starkness: colour burst through the seams of a black jacket, and bundles of ribbon spill from typewriters and musical instruments, as though the machine can no longer contain its art. The result is a story about both the visual unfolding of Petterson’s creative process itself, and his playfully critical investigation of the objects that make up our lives.

VIEW ARTWORK BY ANDRE PETTERSON HERE

DAVID BURDENY | OCEANS

DAVID BURDENY | Oceans
350 Dundas St. W, Toronto
May 6 - 31, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 6 from 2-4 PM

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present Oceans, the latest series by David Burdeny. Oceans explores the geological formations of water bodies in the Bahamas, Australia, and Europe, capturing the complex, abstract qualities of the deep sea. Burdeny’s scenes are celebrations of the natural world, but, below the surface, they map a precious and precarious resource. Serpentine sandbars stretch into a Bahamian horizon; Australian bays are sharply rendered fields of impossible blue. Long exposures—evident in views of Sicily—soften waves, revealing formations beneath the water. Bodies that dot the cliff sides cast long shadows, indelible marks on an expanse otherwise untouched. The contemporary sublime is for Burdeny both a call to action that compels one to protect her world, and a message about culpability. Receding vistas are the dreamy escape; human presence is the sobering reminder. Like the depths his exposures reveal, Burdeny unearths layers—of not just the landscape—but the fraught relationship between the earth we inhabit and the environmental future we inherit.

David Burdeny (b. 1968. Winnipeg, Canada) holds Masters degrees in Architecture and Interior Design, and is the recipient of notable photography awards including Photographer of the Year (Nature category) at the International Photography Awards.

This exhibition has been selected as a featured exhibition for the annual Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival.

VIEW ARTWORK BY DAVID BURDENY HERE

DAVID LEVENTI | Viewpoints

DAVID LEVENTI | Viewpoints
350 Dundas St. W, Toronto
April 22 - May 5, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 22nd from 2-4 PM | Artist in attendance

Bau-Xi Photo is pleased to present Viewpoints, a retrospective of work by New York based photographer David Leventi. Over the last ten years, Leventi has traveled internationally to document prisons, hangars, Venetian interiors, and opulent opera houses. Working with 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 inch Arca-Swiss cameras, Leventi offers visitors an impressive perspective of these monumental structures. Rendered with perfect symmetry and in sharp detail, Leventi’s works reveal his subjects in a hyper-reality normally invisible to the naked eye.

Leventi's photographs have been widely published in TIME, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN The Magazine, FT Weekend Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, among others. His work is also installed in prestigious private and public collections including The Sir Elton John Collection and The Cleveland Museum of Art.

Steven Nederveen | Nature Transforms : Experiments in Layered Landscapes

STEVEN NEDERVEEN | Nature Transforms : Experiments in Layered Landscapes
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
May 6 - 20, 2017

Steven Nederveen's invitation to create a work for the Canadian Consulate in Iceland commemorating Canada's 150th Anniversary has led him to examine his own practice in dialogue with Canadian art for his latest exhibition, Nature Transforms: Experiments in Layered Landscapes. Finding an affinity between his work and the mystical landscapes popularized by Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, and Frederick Varley, Nederveen imbues the theosophic appreciation for the Canadian wildness exemplified by these iconic artists with a new exploration in colour and layering media.

"For this show, in addition to my well-known trees and mountains, I’ve incorporated some groundbreaking new techniques that are used to convey ice and water. I’m interested in the way that water responds to invisible forces around it like, currents, wind, hot and cold temperatures. It’s an element that equally shapes, and is shaped by its environment. I think this has a direct parallel to human struggle and transformation"

Continuing the exchange with Iceland, Nature Transforms includes imagery of Iceland’s breath-taking natural beauty. New abstracted works referencing small cross sections of a glacier pay homage to the cool climate of this northern nation. Nederveen extends the two dimensional painting surface outward by using multiple transparent planes that are raised, painted and cut into. These paintings capture ice in all its fascinating fractures, sediment deposits, and crystal blue transparencies.

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