SAG marks 20 years of digital art programming
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2019 13:20:49 +0000
To mark the past 20 years of digital art programming, the gallery is presenting new and recent work from leading artists in this field. Artists include photographer Helma Sawatzky who, in her series Data Mulch, uses images from the compost bin at Vancouver’s Granville Island Public Market to connect the act of composting organic matter with the properties of our digital lives. Other works include Faisal Anwar’s large-scale video CharBagh, which uncovers the link between algorithms and Islamic art and design; Robert Youds’ series For Everyone a Fountain, which explores the garden by translating photographs of an iconic public garden in British Columbia into coloured light sequences; and virtual reality artist Paisley Smith, who teams up with painter and sculptor Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun for Unceded Territories. The exhibit also includes Leila Sujir’s Forest Breath, which uses stereoscopic 3D video to portray a section of dense woodland.
Garden in the Machine
September 21 to December 15; 13750 88th Avenue (Surrey Arts Centre), 604-501-5566
surrey.ca
At the Vancouver Art Gallery, the first major retrospective of Victoria’s Vikky Alexander features her 1983 silver gelatin print Obsession.
Vikky Alexander’s work in the 1980s, first in New York and then in Vancouver, caused critics to align some of her ideas with those of the Vancouver School of photo-conceptualism. Collecting photographs, collages and sculpture from the last 40 years, Extreme Beauty is the first retrospective of this internationally recognized Victoria-born artist.
Vikky Alexander:
Extreme Beauty
Until October 27; 750 Hornby Street,
604-662-4700
vanartgallery.bc.ca
The Belkin Gallery’s exhibit Spill includes works such as Susan Schuppli’s Nature Represents Itself, a detail from a film simulation of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2018.
Spill presents work by a variety of artists expressing environmental concerns in a variety of media. Installations by Carolina Caycedo, Teresa Montoya, Genevieve Robertson and Susan Schuppli, for example, focus on our continental waters and their impaired movement, contamination and political rights. More specifically, Schuppli’s Nature Represents Itself (2018) examines the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico through a simulated image based on the properties of the hydrocarbon atoms of the escaped crude oil. Spill also includes two programming events, Spill: Radio and Spill: Response. In the latter, artists, activists and educators come together for a series of workshops and performances. And Spill: Radio will, throughout the project, present radio episodes in collaboration with CiTR 101.9 FM.
Spill
September 3 to December 1; 1825 Main Mall, UBC, 604-822-2759
belkin.ubc.ca
Giovanni Battista Scultori’s 1538 engraving The River God Po and a Putto, is just one of the Italian masterworks in the Burnaby Art Gallery’s exhibit Saints, Sinners and Souvenirs.
A selection of prints and drawings, the Italian masterworks in Saints, Sinners and Souvenirs date from the Renaissance up until the late 18th century. Their religious, historical and mythological underpinnings are examined in a catalogue of essays that complements the exhibition. The collection of works from Vancouver-area public and private collections is the first of its kind in over 30 years.
Saints, Sinners and Souvenirs: Italian Masterworks on Paper
September 13 to November 17; 6344 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby, 604-297-4422
burnabyartgallery.ca
New works by Jérôme Rapin include his oil-on-canvas Femme assise sur un banc, 2019, at Z Gallery Arts.
Jérôme Rapin is a French painter whose work is influenced by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, and Bulgarian artist Oda Jaune. Possible Cause of Life will feature new oil paintings.
Jérôme Rapin: Possible Cause of Life
September 12 to November 9; 102–1688 West 1st Avenue, 604-312-0991
zgalleryarts.com
Works by Marie-France Boisvert are on display at Kurbatoff Gallery.
With Random, Marie-France Boisvert is “inviting the visitor to live an immersive experience on resilience.” The Montreal painter further states that “the theme stands out in a sometimes uncertain, indefinite and vague universe, but often suggests a gathering place.” The show features a dozen large-scale works, acrylic and mixed-media on canvas.
Marie-France Boisvert: Random
September 19 to October 8; 2435 Granville Street, 604-736-5444
kurbatoffgallery.com