Grotesque, beautiful and startling exhibition
The fall visual-arts season kicks off this month with a feast for the mind and senses
One of the big highlights of the fall visual arts season is an exhibition by the Vancouver Biennale. Hyper-realistic sculptures of human-animal creatures are being shown at the Patricia Hotel, starting this month. They’re so startling they’re sure to be a big hit on Instagram. Other exhibitions include busts that sprout mushrooms, beautiful photographs showing the harsh effects of colonialism on Indigenous people, and dreamy GIFs inspired by the Surrey landscape.
CURIOUS IMAGININGS
When: Sept. 14 to Dec. 15 Where: Patricia Hotel, 403 East Hastings, Vancouver
Tickets and info: $11$40, imcurious.ca
Nothing quite like Patricia Piccinini’s transgenic creations have been shown in Vancouver before. Made out of silicon, fibreglass, paint, Plasticine and human hair, they ride the divide between Homo sapiens and animals. They explore intimate issues such as motherhood and family and scientific ideas such as genetics and evolution.
Based in Melbourne, Australia, Piccinini is one of those rare artists who has achieved acclaim in the art world and among the public. In 2003, she represented Australia at the Venice Biennale, considered the world’s top international contemporary art fair. “A lot of my work is about nurturing,” she told The Australian. “I think that’s one of its strengths.”
Piccinini’s hyperrealist creatures are incredibly popular, and at the Patricia Hotel, the works in the Vancouver Biennale exhibition will be displayed outside of a traditional art setting in rooms on the second floor.
IN SUSPENDED SILENCE
When: Sept. 14 to Nov. 10 Where: Richmond Art Gallery, 7700 Minoru Gate
Tickets and info: Free; richmondartgallery.org
On a residency in China, Xiaojing Yan noticed that a pine tree was exactly the same kind that grew in her yard in Markham, Ontario. The pine tree became a metaphor for the bridge between two different ideas of home.
Describing herself as an artist who thinks in Chinese but speaks in English, Yan uses traditional Chinese materials and techniques and re-imagines them in a contemporary setting.
For Mountain of Pines, Yan created the kind of image of distant mountains found in traditional Chinese painting out of thousands of pine needles. Lingzhi Girls are eight life-size busts of Yan as a young girl with sprouting lingzhi mushrooms, which are considered among the most respected medicinal mushrooms in Asia.
The number of busts reference the Eight Immortals (Xian) of Daoist philosophy; copies highlight China’s modern dependence on mass production.
FRINGING THE CUBE
When: Oct. 27 to Feb. 3, 2019
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
Tickets and info: vanartgallery.bc.ca
Dana Claxton disarms you with her work. She uses form and colour to create photographs and videos that are beautiful and challenging. Their visual appeal is part of a larger story of exploring what she calls “difficult knowledge”: how colonialism has oppressed Indigenous people in Canada.
Claxton is a descendant of the Lakota (Sioux) who came to Saskatchewan from Montana with Sitting Bull whose Indigenous forces defeated Gen. George Custer and the U.S. army at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876.
Her first survey exhibition includes recent lightbox images such as Headdress and Cultural Belongings that complicate the Indigenous story by exploring the challenge of carrying on tradition and individual identity.
LIQUID LANDSCAPES
When: Sept. 21 to Jan. 6, 2019
Where: Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre, 13458 107a St., Surrey
Tickets and info: Free, surrey.ca
Nicolas Sassoon is known for creating dreamy digital animations that use repetitive patterns in a format that recalls the pixelated past. Relaxing and hypnotic, his abstract GIFs have explored everything from after-hours dance clubs in Vancouver to the landscape of the Pacific Northwest.
In Liquid Landscapes, Sassoon has narrowed his focus to seven sites around Surrey such as Redwood Park, Nicomeckl River and Serpentine Fen to create what’s been described as “rippling reflections, flowing waves and the growth and decay of foliage.” Images can be seen 30 minutes after sunset to midnight.