Exhibitions

Nicole Katsuras | Wellspring
Solo Exhibition
July 19 - August 2, 2025
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 19 2-4pm


Bau-Xi Vancouver is proud to present Wellspring, the latest solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Nicole Katsuras. This dynamic new collection draws from an abundant inner source of creative vitality - a personal reservoir of memory and emotion. Through richly textured surfaces and vibrant colour, Katsuras transforms the ephemeral into the tangible, offering lyrical interpretations of life's complexity and beauty. Her new works serve as distinctly personal expressions that reflect our shared human impulse to find meaning through the rhythms of transformation and renewal.


Artist Statement:

A wellspring is a source of abundant, continuous flow, often associated with life-giving water or inspiration. In my context, it represents the artist’s inner reservoir of creativity - an ever-renewing fountain of ideas, emotions, and insights. 

The creative life of an artist is not for the faint of heart: it is a never-ending journey of experimentation and self reflection that is energized by the endless wellspring of creative thoughts. In my paintings I am working through memories and feelings of nostalgia, filtering the pangs of everyday life to transform it into something physically real and recognizable to others. This transformation illustrates the interconnectedness of art, life, and nature: my paintings are not mere representations but lyrical interpretations, where bold colours and textured surfaces pulse with the energy of existence. 'Wellspring' suggests that these inspirations are not fleeting but cyclical, continually flowing back into my work, resonating like a pulse across throughout the expanse of my oeuvre. For viewers, my new exhibition becomes an invitation to join this journey - to reflect on their own connections to land and life, and to find joy in the unexpected beauty of ever-evolving creation.

-Nicole Katsuras, 2025


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

George Byrne | Synthetica
July 10 - August 4, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening reception: Saturday, July 12th, 2 - 5 pm 

Acclaimed photographic artist George Byrne returns with Synthetica, a bold new exhibition that fuses analogue photography with digital innovation to reimagine the American landscape. Rooted in Byrne’s early influences from the New Topographics movement, this series marks a striking evolution in his practice. Where once he documented, he now deconstructs and rebuilds - layering, subtracting, and collaging until a new reality emerges. The result is a collection of surreal yet grounded dreamscapes, where the ordinary is elevated and the boundaries between the natural and the artificial dissolve. From Daytona Beach to Yellowstone, Synthetica is both a visual journey and a conceptual inquiry - exploring the way we perceive, manipulate, and emotionally respond to our environments in a hyper-mediated, AI-inflected age.

Artist statement:

This series explores the tension between the natural and the artificial, challenging preconceptions of reality in an increasingly digital age, while also paying homage to my analogue photographic roots. Starting out as an artist, I was very much a student of the New Topographics photographic movement, a style based on the artist's neutral eye, famous for documenting the mundane structures of post-war America. About 5 years ago, I started to become interested in employing various forms of manipulation and digital reconstruction into the work I was making. As a result, the images were able to become more expressive and introspective; a bridge between my subconscious and conscious.  Each image in the Synthetica series started as a medium format film photograph, then, through a process of addition, subtraction, collage and endless reevaluation, a new completed image is born. The foundation of a lot of the images in this series were taken over the last few years during road trips I took around the United States. From Daytona Beach to Yellowstone National Park, these were both natural and man-made landscapes - places I'd never been. – George Byrne

Co-director of Bau-Xi Gallery, Kyle Matuzewiski, provides further insight into Byrne’s unique photographic style and practice. He writes:

When first experiencing George's work, I remember being struck by the clean and clinical aesthetic. Every aspect of the resulting photograph felt intentional. Shadows perfectly placed. Vantage points thoughtfully selected, providing an optimal composition. One must take a single glance at Byrne's work to see the heady influence that the New Topographics movement has on the artist's practice. However, Byrne's work diverges from those luminaries with his signature use of colour, bringing each frame to life, and allowing the viewer to experience the lush vibrancy of his creation. There is a matter-of-fact-ness to Byrne's images, yet there is humanity to them as well. The artist's rampant curiosity and fascination with our constructed world is conveyed in a way that demands contemplation from the viewer. Even though his work documents a specific location at a specific moment of time, there is timelessness to them - a heartfelt documentation of the collective human experience and what is yet to come.

George Byrne is an internationally recognized photographer based in Los Angeles. Byrne creates large-scale photographs that depict architectural surfaces and landscapes as painterly abstractions. Borrowing from the clean, vivid clarity of modernist painting, he also references the New Topographics photography movement via a subject matter firmly entrenched in the urban everyday. 

Byrne started photographing Los Angeles with a medium format camera in 2010. 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. 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.

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, Los Angeles, and New York. In 2019, Byrne placed third in the Fine Art category of the Minimalist Photography Awards and was named the Minimalist Photographer of the Year in the Minimalist Photography Awards' 2020 edition. Byrne relocated to Los Angeles, California in 2010, where he continues to live and work.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Kyle Scheurmann | We’re All In This Together
June 5 - 30, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 5th, 5 - 8 pm | Artist in Attendance
Artist Talk & Documentary Preview: Saturday, June 7th, 2 - 4 pm 

In a moment when ecosystems are unraveling and wildfires reshape the land, artist and activist Kyle Scheurmann asks us to look closer. His upcoming exhibition, We’re All In This Together, opening this June, offers an unflinching yet tender portrait of British Columbia’s forests in flux - where beauty and devastation coexist, and where sustained attention becomes both an artistic act and an ethical one. Through vivid, densely layered paintings, Scheurmann invites us into a world on fire, still pulsing with life.

We welcome guests to enjoy Kyle Scheurmann’s artist talk on Saturday, June 7th, 2025 from 2:00 – 4:00 PM at Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin. During this event, guests will hear the artist speak to his experience creating this compelling body of work, and a screening of “A Beautiful Resistance” – a short documentary about the artist's practice as journalism, conservation and activism. 

About the exhibition:

Essay by Liz Toohey-Wiese, artist and educator speaking on Kyle Scheurmann’s upcoming exhibition We're All In This Together:

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
-Simone Weil, from “The First and Last Notebooks”

To truly know a landscape—to study its details, immerse in its rhythms, and then witness its gradual disappearance year after year—is to commit to having your heart broken over and over again. Across the forests of British Columbia, drought, wildfires, and pest infestations proliferate, as we extract value from the land as quickly as possible through unsustainable logging practices. These rapid changes unfold faster than most of us realize, yet through his paintings, Kyle remains steadfast in his attention.

Amid these steady declines in our biosphere, the natural rhythms of the planet continue to find ways to flourish. This paradox is disorienting– the earth is simultaneously living and dying, all at the same time. When Kyle has spoken to me about his experiences painting sites of logging blockades, old-growth forests, and remote wilderness locations many of us will never travel to, this contrast stood out repeatedly: alongside loss there is overwhelming beauty, and they can be found existing side-by-side.

I see this holding of dual realities reflected in both the human and the more-than-human figures in Kyle’s paintings, and I often wonder how these characters feel about the worlds they inhabit. In one composition, a burning tree contains numerous beings scattered throughout its branches: a perched bald eagle and a northern goshawk, a flock of Stellar’s jays, a pair of black bears, along with a group of land defenders. Meanwhile, loggers strung up in the canopy and positioned at the base of the tree work to harvest its timber. To various degrees, these characters all seem to be ignoring the reality of the raging fire engulfing the tree– except for one lone figure standing on a stump, presumably the artist. His upward gaze suggests total awareness of the scene unfolding before him.

In another painting a house under construction is cocooned in Tyvek, surrounded by a clearing of fallen, burnt trees. Three figures are working to rebuild the house. With hands and tools, support and determination, they are piecing together something new. On one side, smouldering fires burn; on the other, fireweed blooms. I see these three figures representing all of us: rebuilding and tending to a world on fire, while the intelligent, resilient, and reparative natural processes of the earth unfold beside us.

While the imagery in this new series of work is haunting– of animals on fire, tiny helicopters dwarfed by growing conflagrations, and the charred remains of a burnt home– there is no denying Kyle’s paintings are captivating. 

The landscapes he paints are full of generosity, both in what is depicted, and how it is depicted. Bears gorge themselves on more salmon than they could possibly eat. People pick berries while ankle-deep in overflowing streams. Flowers and ferns and saplings push up and proliferate across any bare patch of land.

How do we live with this ambiguity, this simultaneous living and dying, this renewal alongside destruction? How do we grieve the damage that has been done while still finding the energy to tend to what remains? And how do we keep looking and not turn away—from climate collapse, from the increasing instability of our ecosystems, from the truth of what is unfolding?

When I’ve stood in a gallery of Kyle’s work, I’ve seen this: people curled in close, their faces hovering just inches from the canvas. The vivid colours, intricate details, and layered compositions invite us into these overflowing landscapes, our eyes guided by dense linework depicting the movement of land and water. I’ve seen curiosity on people’s faces, mouths shaped into soft “wow”s, fingers suspended in the air, tracing invisible paths of discovery as more and more of the world within the painting is revealed. Through aesthetics, we are invited into proximity. 

In that act of looking—of sustained attention trained onto Kyle’s paintings—we are shown something vital: that we already have the capacity to stay close to the uncomfortable reality of what is happening in this moment of our earth’s history. We already know how to attune our eyes towards the beauty that will sustain us. And that woven in with the sharp pain of witnessing loss, we can also feel the grounded joy of being present with everything that is still here with us. - Liz Toohey-Wiese

Co-director of Bau-Xi Gallery, Kyle Matuzewiski, lends his thoughts on Kyle Scheurmann’s work and what it stands for in today’s climate:

My conversations with Kyle are peppered with memorable phrases. While our discussions are centered on the developing body of work, we frequently meander into the all-encompassing. We discuss current events, philosophy, social movements and our future – both as individuals and as a collective. 

One of those utterances keeps playing over and over in my head, like a needle skipping on a record: “I am an environmentalist, because I am a humanitarian.”

I recall having to ask Kyle to repeat himself, as the profound sentiment of the comment caught me off guard. It was like I had just experienced conversational whiplash. In that singular moment, the way in which I look at his work shifted forever.

Environmentalism and humanitarianism are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Simply because we wish to protect the natural world around us, it does not mean it requires impingement where the conditions for humanity are concerned. What it does require is a baseline for collective empathy and progressive values, specifically with “sustainability” in mind. I emphasize that word with quotations as it has been bandied about over the years.

The broader concept of sustainability – “meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” – is one that has been corrupted and used to greenwash many a thing. Even with our aim to foster sustainability, it can have long-lasting impacts. Simply because we cut down hundreds of old-growth trees – to use in housing developments, for instance – and replant hundreds (or thousands) more, does not make it any less consequential. In fact, it is far more devastating.

This brings us to the work Kyle has created for We’re All In This Together. The artist has witnessed these impacts firsthand. He stood alongside Forest Protectors at Fairy Creek. He has traversed the carcasses of old-growth, savagely hacked down with corporate interests at heart. He has aligned himself with conservation groups actively supporting real reconciliation with the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island.

The culmination of these experiences is carefully and meticulously documented throughout his practice, for all to see. He sees this work as part of a larger discourse, entrenched in both environmentalism and humanitarianism.

Even with ample cause to be disheartened, he perseveres, seeking to capture viewers and demonstrate that there is still magic in the world. - Kyle Matuzewiski

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1988, Kyle Scheurmann completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto in 2013. In 2018, Scheurmann completed his Master of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver.

Since 2019, Scheurmann has kept studios in remote, wooded locations to document the incremental approach of climate change while simultaneously working on conservation and activism efforts. In 2021, the artist was invited to participate in the Eden Grove AiR, a residency at the Fairy Creek Blockades on unceded Pacheedaht territory. During his four-month stay at the blockade camps, Scheurmann served not only as a resident artist but also as a journalist and legal witness in the face of the injustices carried out by law enforcement against Forest Protectors who were fighting to save some of the last remaining highly productive ancient forests in Canada.

Since this experience, Scheurmann has been working towards systemic and legislative approaches for permanent environmental protection, including aligning himself with the conservationist group, the Nature-Based Solutions Foundations (NBSF), as the creator and host of the Art Auction for Old-Growth. He was also involved with the foundation of a new environmentally focused residency at the Harvest Moon Learning Centre in Clearwater MB, collaborating with experimental regenerative farmers in order to share holistic approaches to land stewardship as a means for new art making.

WATCH KYLE SCHEURMANN'S DOCUMENTARY "A BEAUTIFUL RESISTANCE" HERE

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Eric Louie | Waking In The Quiet Dawn
June 5 - 30, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 5th, 5 - 8 pm | Artist in Attendance

Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin presents Waking In The Quiet Dawn, a striking new exhibition that delves into the evolving dialogue between digital creation and traditional painting. In this timely body of work, the artist reflects on the blurring boundaries between reality and simulation in an AI-driven world, translating digital renderings into physical, emotive canvases. Through motifs of light, memory, and imagined architecture, the exhibition speaks to our cultural obsession with novelty, the digital pursuit of identity, and the fleeting visibility of the self in a hyperconnected age.

Artist statement:

I’ve been exploring painting under the digital influence for some time, and how it has become the framework for the way we communicate in most areas of modern life. As the use of AI has become more prevalent, the blur between reality and fiction is stronger and unavoidable. I’ve been using Procreate to bring my ideas to life, and as a result, have begun emulating the renderings and their characteristics in my work. When transcribing this information, a digital form is spoken through a language as old as painting. As a result, the process becomes experimental and physical. 

I like to think of the imagery in my paintings as glorified memories or imaginations of waking events. Perhaps these moments are idealized, like the way we choose to remember the past or envision the future - with added flare and heightened reality, the hyperbole, the romanticism. We seem obsessed as a species, looking for something new and impressive with excessive and insatiable hunger. That sense of awe and reverence has become addictive when seeing and experiencing new things. I wanted to capture that essence associated with technology with whisps of futurism and shiny surfaces. This desire to chase newness, along with our dependence on using digital media to find answers and identity, leaves us questioning who we are as a species and what role technology plays as we head into the unknown. I find it both frightening and amazing in its potential.

This body of work represents a time of introspection and reflection. Many of the paintings use motifs of light sources, gathering places or bodies. Buildings and edifices wrapped in overgrowth or bare for the world to see are depicted in some instances. Just like how we arise from obscurity, emerging for a moment, then receding or vanishing until the next time. Every subject searching for its moment, this aspect of the human condition is so delicate, so ephemeral. The infinite potential is something to live for. – Eric Louie

Co-director of Bau-Xi Gallery, Kyle Matuzewiski, reflects on Eric Louie's practice and upcoming exhibition, Waking In The Quiet Dawn.

Art has often been a harbinger of change. It can explore themes of reformation, foreshadow what is to come, or even signal a new era. Eric Louie’s practice has been on the forefront of that ‘new era’ for some time now, as digital practices – previously integrated – have led to introspection and reflection on how they now influence every aspect of our day to day.

In his recent body of work “Waking In The Quiet Dawn”, the artist looks to capture an element of the ephemeral through his unique visual language, forms influenced by technology or some futuristic lens. These multi-faceted and illuminated constructs are viewed as idealized imaginings, documenting a moment in time.

My experience of Eric’s work has always been one of wonderment and awe, feeling as if I am embarking on a journey simultaneously occurring in the past, present, and future. Due to his work being steeped in a historical perspective of painting as documentation, I see bucolic pastures, mountainous landscapes and modernistic structures, all to experience simultaneously.

That dance is one the artist navigates deftly, pushing and pulling with nuance. As our interactions with technology increase, we will continue to find reprieves within the time honoured practices that Eric has on high display, eagerly awaiting to see how our society is portrayed on his canvas. – Kyle Matuzewiski

Eric Louie is a Vancouver based painter whose sculptural, organic abstracts allude to landscape, still life and even portraiture. His signature metallic, shimmering forms, achieved via many thin layers of luminescent glazes, are central to the virtual worlds he creates. Louie's works possess a chameleonic ability to exist comfortably among a multitude of aesthetics, from 1920s Art Deco and Mid-Century Modern through to the late 20th Century and into the forefront of contemporary design.

Louie holds a B.F.A from the Alberta College of Art and Design, where he was awarded the prestigious Jason Lang Scholarship. His work is included in numerous private and public collections including CIBC, Encana Energy, NBC Studios, Paramount and MGM Pictures, as well as the City of Calgary.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION 

Ted Fullerton |  Born In - The Year of the Snake
May 8 - June 2, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto
Opening reception: Saturday, May 10th, 2 - 5 pm | Artist in attendance

In Ted Fullerton's newest exhibition, Born In - The Year of the Snake, the artist presents a body of work that explores symbolic, dualistic imagery to communicate themes of transformation, identity, and the human experience. Drawing on myth and personal narrative, Fullerton’s figurative compositions act as visual metaphors - truths and allegories that resonate beyond their immediate form. The recurring motif of the serpent, tied both to ancient symbolism and the artist’s own birth year, anchors this exhibition in a deep, intuitive exploration of meaning and renewal.

Artist statement:

“For the true poet, metaphor is not a rhetorical trope, but a representative image which really hovers in front of them in place of an idea.” -Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy

“As an artist, I see my work as being primarily symbolic and figurative.

I explore images that are dualistic in nature, or characters where form and content equate in a condition of understanding. Reconciling the “Other” is of importance, where the merging of life and the condition of human existence has a presence of resolve – an acceptance of acquired and intuitive knowledge.

Works selected for Born In – The Year of the Snake were chosen as they support my interest in a pictorial language that illustrates and reinforces the “myth” image – a collective memory and allegory. They are symbolic references of truths, or generalizations about the human existence and “being”.

In reference to the title of this exhibition, the serpent has frequently appeared within my work over the years. My fascination has been two-fold; firstly, as one which is associated with transformation, wisdom, healing and the renewal of life – and secondly, from a personal point of interest as I was born in the Year of the Snake.

In poetry words take on meaning beyond their initial intent. Images within my work take on meaning beyond their initial intent.” - Ted Fullerton

Ted Fullerton works in contemporary painting, printmaking and sculpture, and has achieved numerous awards including the Juror's Award in the CIM Centennial Art Competition and the Boston Printmaker's Juried Exhibition award. He has exhibited across Canada as well as in England, Australia, Spain and Yugoslavia. Fullerton's works are in private, corporate and public collections including the Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby, BC; Oregon State University, Oregon, USA; Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, ON; University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON; and Markborough Properties, Halifax, NS. Ted Fullerton graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1976.

VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

Tom Burrows | Clam
Solo Exhibition | Main Level Gallery
May 10-24, 2025
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday May 10, 2-4pm | Artist In Attendance

Tom Burrows' latest exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery is a meditation on environmental change, shaped by decades of living and harvesting clams and other shellfish along the shores of the Salish Sea. In his new series, Clam, Burrows reflects on the quiet disappearance of the clam beds he once relied on, drawing a connection between personal loss and the broader impact of ocean acidification. The series of cast polymer resin sculptures produced for the exhibition stand as both elegy and witness—artifacts of a vanishing intertidal world.

Artist Statement: 

“There’s an adage on the Northwest Coast: “When the tide is out, the table is set.”

I had been harvesting clams from the same intertidal gravel beach within walking distance of my island studio for over five decades. The area remained productive through various harvesting intensities from myself and other islanders until three years ago, when I found it was taking me twice the amount of time to gather the same number of clams. Two years ago, the clam raking took longer still.  Last year, I tried once and realized soon there would be nothing to return to.

The increasing acidification of the Salish Sea resulting from historically high levels of atmospheric CO2 is dissolving the shells of juvenile clams. 

Even in the lean times, I could depend on a meal of linguine alle vongole in which a pot of clams is steamed in their shells drizzled with oil and garlic. Once the clams open, their briny sweetness spills from their shells and the pot is emptied over a bowl of warm pasta. Within moments, that small salty goddess is on the tongue.
 
I now make do with the wondrous plains of light as the tide slides over the gravel beach. Waiting. Watching.” – Tom Burrows, 2025


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION

David T. Alexander | The Northern Coast: The Second Time Around
Solo Exhibition
April 12 - 26, 2025
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Opening Reception: Saturday April 12, 2-4pm | Artist In Attendance
Artist Talk: Saturday April 12, 2:15pm

Bau-Xi Vancouver proudly presents The Northern Coast: The Second Time Around, the highly anticipated new solo exhibition from established, award-winning Canadian painter David T. Alexander. After moving back to the West Coast of Canada from the interior of BC after many years, Alexander sees it with fresh eyes, presenting rich and painterly additions to his wet and dry series in a lively, heightened colour palette. This solo exhibition marks Alexander's first in four years in Vancouver.

The April 12 opening reception of The Northern Coast: The Second Time Around will feature an artist talk beginning at 2:15pm.

Artist statement:

Moving back to British Columbia makes me very aware that I have been issued a learner’s license for what I thought I knew about what this ocean and land really are. The density of the land and the richer colours are different in my mind now. It has also required me to make frequent trips up the coastline over the last four years to take it all in. This time, I’m not working in a large tugboat but concentrating on how I am living here once again, the second time around: I am living on the edge of land, facing the vast expanse of change and familiar sameness on the coast.

- David T. Alexander, 2025


VIEW THE FULL COLLECTION