CSA Space

Johannes Bendzulla

2012-01-10T12:45:00.001-08:00

12 January 2012 through 12 February 2012
Opening reception Wednesday 11 January 2012, 6-9pm

Curated by Adam Harrison and Graham Dalik

Johannes Bendzulla is an Italian artist based in Düsseldorf, Germany. He will be present at the opening.

Christopher Brayshaw: INTO THIN AIR

2011-11-14T20:28:00.001-08:00

24 November 2011 through 31 December 2011
Opening reception Thursday 24 November 2011, 6-9pm

Christopher Brayshaw is a Vancouver-based photographer/book-
seller/curator. This exhibition, his first, includes digital photographs made between 2005 and 2011 in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York.

Exhibition review by Michael Turner

Exhibition review by Robin Laurence (Georgia Straight)

Ahbyah Baker & Hannah Hughes: SHAPELY

2011-10-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

20 October 2011 through 20 November 2011
Opening reception Thursday 20 October 2011, 6-9pm

Curated by Lilac Lang

The show’s title, “Shapely,” refers to seemingly unrelated aspects of both artists’ practices: in Hannah Hughes’ figurative work, the pleasing form of the female subjects, and in Ahbyah Baker’s abstract painting, the type of objects depicted. Each artist’s work exhibits a common theme of tension between abstraction and representation.

“Shapely” acknowledges the urge to move beyond the technical ability of mimicking representational imagery in painting, even as the desire to demonstrate these very things is fulfilled. The work is neither entirely abstract nor objective. Even if one considers Baker’s minimalist paintings without the context of her previous figurative work, the singular shapes employ a central figure/ground relationship typical of most portraiture, including the distorted and masked women of Hannah's work. Shapely suggests that the imaginary border between figurative and non-objective imagery or abstract and representational painting is a blurry or dotted line.

Ahbyah Baker received a BFA from Emily Carr Institute in 2006. Her work has been exhibited at Or Gallery and Shudder Gallery in Vancouver and she was a recent participant in the Summer Residency Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. She lives and works in Vancouver.

Hannah Hughes completed her BA in Critical Fine Art Practice at the University of Brighton in 1997 and moved to Vancouver in 2008. She works principally in painting but is also responsible for co-founding The Drawing Salon, a travelling program of contemporary drawing workshops due to start this autumn.

Lilac Lang received her BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan in 2007. Earlier this year, she was the resident artist at Spark Box Studio in Ontario. Her work has been exhibited at The Red Head Gallery in Toronto, Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver, and The Alternator in Kelowna.

Arni Haraldsson: AWAKE IN MOUNT PLEASANT

2011-09-08T18:19:00.000-07:00

9 September 2011 through 9 October 2011
Opening reception Friday 9 September 2011, 6-9pm

Guest curated by Alex Pensato

Since the eighties Arni Haraldsson has amassed a vast collection of found imagery gathered from various religious publications such as Awake! and Plain Truth that were made available to him while out strolling in his neighbourhood of Mount Pleasant. Haraldsson clipped the photographic images from these publications and assorted them into various categories. The resulting deconstructed forms and groupings of found images simultaneously espouse the religious and utopic pedagogical intent of their publications and the personal aspirations and hopes of the local Mt. Pleasant followers who distributed them. Taken as such, Awake in Mt. Pleasant can be seen as an unorthodox portrait of the artist's neighbourhood.

Arni Haraldsson has exhibited his photographic work nationally and internationally for the past two decades. Recent exhibitions include Les Lendemains d’hier (Yesterday’s Tomorrows) at Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal; Lugar/Place festival PhotoEspana at the Museu Berardo in Lisbon; and Ze Lino (Copan Project) at Casa Vertigo in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Haraldsson has done numerous residencies, including the Canada Council studios in London and Paris. He has contributed to publications such as EXIT, Fillip, Pyramid Power and Canadian Art. Much of his work has focused on key modernist sites from around the world, often undergoing states of transition. His work generally poses the built environment as emblematic of larger social forces, instrumental in the formation of human relations.

Donato Mancini: I SMELL SOMETHING BURNING (H.K.Y.D.)

2011-07-06T18:29:00.001-07:00

7 July 2011 through 21 August 2011
Opening reception Thursday 7 July 2011, 6-9 pm

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

The interdisciplinary practice of Donato Mancini focuses mainly on bookworks, poetry, and text-based visual art. He is the author of four books of procedural and visual writings: Ligatures (2005) and Æthel (2007), Buffet World (2011), and Fact ‘N’ Value (2011). His collaborative visual works have been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Scandinavia and Cuba. Notable exhibitions featuring Mancini’s individual works include Surveillance Sketch (Artspeak, Vancouver 2003), Untitled: Conversation Loops (Western Front, Vancouver 2004) and Angels in the Angles (Gallery Atsui, Vancouver 2009). He also co-directed the world’s first genuine in-world avatar documentary, AVATARA (Centre A, Vancouver 2003), now part of the UbuWeb international archive of experimental film and video. Long time member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he was a principal organiser of the interdisciplinary N 49 15.832 - W 123 05.921 Positions Colloquium in August 2008. His booklength critical survey of the language, ideology and aesthetic conscience of poetry reviewing in Canada is forthcoming in 2013. Mancini lives in Vancouver, where he is enrolled in the Ph.D. program in English at the University of British Columbia.

Krisdy Shindler: FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN

2011-05-04T16:48:00.001-07:00

12 May 2011 through 12 June 2011
Opening reception Thursday 12 May 2011, 6-9pm

Curated by Steven Tong

Please note special hours for this exhibition: Saturdays & Sundays 12-6pm, and by appointment @ 604-771-6765. The gallery will not be available for drop-in viewing.

Utilizing the platform of the moving image, Shindler's animate works address the traditional archetypes and rhetorics of painting. The abstract oily gestures of paint in action bring a new narrative to the genre, suggesting alternative ways of viewing the practice of painting both currently and historically.

Krisdy Shindler received her BFA from Emily Carr University and an MFA from The Glasgow School of Art. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Spain, The Netherlands, Puerto Rico, Canary Islands, Israel, New York, and across the UK, Wales, and Scotland. Current exhibitions include A Functional Dreamworld at Art Cube in Jerusalem, When a Painting Moves, Something Must be Rotten at The Stenersenmuseet in Oslo, Espiritu de Epoca~ Collection of Ofelia Martin and Javier Nunez at MIAC Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, and The Rhetorics of Patriotism at The Cobra Museum in Amsterdam.

Krisdy Shindler's website

Babak Golkar: PARERGON

2011-03-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

2 April 2011 through 30 April 2011
Opening reception Saturday, April 2nd 2011, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Steven Tong

Much of Babak Golkar's practice attempts to examine and negotiate spaces and signifiers between Eastern and Western cultures, with a particular interest in the tension between pre-modern and modern traditions as they relate to architecture. Examining and questioning the ways in which we come to understand space, Golkar has produced a set of frames much like what one might find warped around a classical painting. These interrupted frames are based on the architectural silhouettes of two world-known buildings: the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The two frames presented at CSA Space are part of a recent series which will be exhibited in the Fall at the Third Line Gallery in Dubai.

Thanks to Chernoff Fine Art for their kind assistance with the production of this exhibition and its accompanying catalog.

Scott Massey: TOPOLOGIES AND LIMITS

2011-02-23T21:59:00.000-08:00

25 February 2011 through 27 March 2011
Opening reception Friday, February 25 2011, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Steven Tong

Brad Phillips: SEVEN YEARS IN SWITZERLAND

2011-02-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

11 February 2011 through 20 February 2011

Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver artist's talk Friday 11 February 2011, 6-9 pm

Michael Drebert: STAR HOUSE and I CARRY A PILE OF STICKS

2011-01-05T16:10:00.000-08:00

7 January 2011 through 6 February 2011
Opening reception Thursday, 6 January 2011, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Adam Harrison

Robert Linsley: RECENT WATERCOLORS

2010-11-14T11:47:00.000-08:00

15 November 2010 through 31 December 2o10
Opening reception Thursday 18 November 2010, 6-9pm

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

Michael Drebert: STAR HOUSE

2010-10-24T12:41:00.000-07:00

26 October 2010, 20:00 - 23:00h

Curated by Adam Harrison

OKTOBER
Ackerstraße 5
Düsseldorf, Germany

Mike Grill

2010-09-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

23 September 2010 through 21 October 2010
Opening reception Thursday, 23 September 2010, 6-9 pm

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

Our fifth anniversary show, though it doesn't feel nearly that long at all.

Tegan Moore: AIR CONDITIONING

2010-08-16T16:21:00.001-07:00

19 August 2010 through 19 September 2010
Opening reception Thursday, August 19th 2010, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Steven Tong

Tegan Moore's website

Lisa Fedorak: RE-VIEW

2010-07-07T14:27:00.001-07:00

9 July 2010 through 9 August 2010
Opening reception Friday, 9 July 2010, 6 – 9 p.m.

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

Aaron Carpenter: TICKING PLUME

2010-05-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

29 May 2010 through 25 June 2010
Opening reception Friday, 28 May 2010, 6 – 9 p.m.

Guest curated by Robin Laurence

Ticking Plume, new work by Vancouver artist Aaron Carpenter, deploys an array of painting, assemblage, text, colour swatches, and found photographs. Through these means, Carpenter investigates the nature of exhibition as a behaviour, conflating the displays of exotic birds with the questionable human impulse to exhibit art.

The exhibition companion consists of the transcript of a conversation between Carpenter and art critic Robin Laurence. Both Carpenter and Laurence will be at CSA Space from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, 29 May 2010 for the citywide Canadian Art Foundation Gallery Hop.

Aaron Carpenter is an artist and writer in Vancouver. His work was recently featured in the Western Front: London Bureau as part of No Soul for Sale at the Tate Modern, London UK. He has had solo exhibitions at Lawrence Eng Gallery, Helen Pitt and is currently exhibiting HYMNS, a permanent installation at Every Letter in the Alphabet. As a founding member of the Bodger's and Kludger's Co-operative, he will be co-facilitating the first International Chilliwack Biennale in Summer of 2010 in coordination with Artspeak and Or Gallery.

Robin Laurence is an independent writer, critic, and occasional curator, based in Vancouver.

THE LINE

2010-04-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

29 April 2010 through 23 May 2010
Opening reception Thursday, 29 April, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Adam Harrison. Featuring artworks by Sabine Dusend (Düsseldorf), Toril Johannessen (Bergen), Dominic Osterried (Düsseldorf), and Jonathan Syme (Vancouver).

Brad Phillips: COLLECTION OF THE ARTIST

2010-03-16T16:32:00.001-07:00

18 March 2010 through 18 April 2010
Opening reception Thursday 18 March 2010, 6 - 9 pm

Guest curated by Brad Phillips. Featuring artworks by Brad Phillips, Melanie Schiff, Anthony Lapore, Slater Bradley, Laura Piasta, Andre Ethier, Aaron Carpenter, Alex Morrison, Tony Romano, Michael Lewis, Jay Isaac, & Lee Friedlander via Playboy magazine, 1982

Brad Phillips is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver

Johann Groebner: FABLES OF THE RECONSTRUCTION

2010-02-07T11:27:00.000-08:00

10th February 2010 through 10 March 2010
Opening reception Wednesday 10th February 2010, 6 - 9 pm

Curated by Steven Tong

Sylvia Grace Borda: DEVELOPING PROCESSES

2009-12-08T09:05:00.000-08:00

15 December 2009 through 31 January 2010
Opening reception Tuesday 15 December 2009, 6-9pm

Artist talk Thursday 7 January 2009, 7pm

Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

Sylvia Grace Borda's website

CSA Space and Pulpfiction Books are raising food for the Vancouver Food Bank throughout the month of December. Donations of dried or canned food will be warmly welcomed at the opening reception.

Isabelle Pauwels: JUNE 30

2009-10-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

22 October 2009 through 22 November 2009
Opening reception Thursday 22 October 2009, 6-9pm
Organized by Christopher Brayshaw and Steven Tong

Isabelle Pauwels is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

Thanks to Catriona Jeffries Gallery and the Charles H. Scott Gallery for their kind assistance with the production of this exhibition.

Please note special hours for this exhibition: Saturdays 10am-6pm, Sundays 11am-7pm, and by appointment. The gallery will not be available for drop-in viewing.

Mohamed Somani: NEW DRAWINGS

2009-08-30T15:07:00.001-07:00

4 September 2009 through 4 October 2009
Opening reception Friday 4 September 2009, 6-9pm
Curated by Steven Tong and Christopher Brayshaw

2009-08-10T11:19:00.000-07:00

Regularly scheduled exhibition programming will resume in early September.

Frank Ramirez: ENTER TIME

2009-07-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

10 July 2009 through 9 August 2009
Opening reception Friday 10 July 2009, 6 - 9 pm
Guest curated by Jack Foster

Frank Ramirez's new photo-based works involve a unique way of seeing nature that incorporates aspects of pareidolia and the perspectives of birds and other animals.

Frank started out in neo-dada, performance, photo-art, fiction, and sonic experimentation. He moved over to music in the late 1970s, fronting the legendary rock band UJ3RK5, which included local luminaries such as Jeff Wall, Bill Gibson, Rodney Graham, Ian Wallace, and others. Frank moved to Europe in 1980, and worked at teaching, electronic music, and hosting an underground radio show featuring new and live music heard in Germany, France and Switzerland.

While on holiday at Tofino in 1991, a friend loaned him a camera to photograph natural phenomena there. The images seemed enigmatic and a little "strange" in the central European context and were compounded into tight triptychs. Further landscape works involved locations such as Cadaqués and the Balearics in Spain.

Frank returned to Vancouver a few years ago and eventually applied his vision to the Gulf Islands and the parks of Strathcona: a new kind of landscape photography influenced by the "isms" of art history and the desire to see man as a part of nature.

Alex Morrison

2009-06-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

5 June 2009 through 5 July 2009
Opening reception Friday 5 June 2009, 6 - 9 pm
Guest curated by Brad Phillips

Alex Morrison is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

Exhibition reviews:

Canadian Art

Akimblog

Jay Isaac: FLOWER PAINTINGS

2009-05-01T12:00:00.000-07:00

1 May through 1 June 2009
Opening reception Friday, 1 May 2009, 6 - 9 pm
Curated by Adam Harrison

(Images of selected paintings in the exhibition courtesy Jay Isaac)

Ian Wallace: ON SURPLUS VALUE

2009-03-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

28 March 2009 through 26 April, 2009
Opening reception Saturday, 28 March 2009, 3 - 6 pm
Artist talk Saturday, 18 April 2009, 4 pm, in conjunction with the Canadian Art Vancouver Gallery Hop

Curated by Adam Harrison

Ian Wallace is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver

On Surplus Value is based on a deconstruction of a few pages of a text by Diedrich Diederichsen titled "On (Surplus) Value in Art." Following a strategy evolved in similar works over the past several years, I have "deconstructed" this text by literally cutting into the page and flipping the cut so that the verso of the page intersects the recto with an interference in its literary logic that is in the shape of a circle formed by the template of a wine glass. The exhibition is a demonstration "concept piece" that presents all the material elements and events of this process of ironic reversals.

-Ian Wallace, 2009

Alison Yip: DRAWINGS 2002-7

2009-02-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

February 21 2009 through March 20 2009
Opening reception Friday February 20th 6 - 9 pm
Curated by Christopher Brayshaw and Adam Harrison

Alison Yip's new exhibition records her ongoing engagement with the act of drawing. Culled from a much larger image archive, the drawings on display speak to Yip's careful observation of the world around her, the people, animals, and objects occupying it, and her sensitivity to the subtleties of dress and gesture that define her human subjects.

Alison Yip is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver.

Steven Hubert: THE SO-PATTERNISTIC

2008-07-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

4 July through 28 July 2008
Opening reception Friday 4 July 2008, 6-9pm
Curated by Adam Harrison
Text by Angela Johnston

Rebecca Donald, Evan Lee and Ben Reeves: WORKS ON PAINTING

2007-09-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

14 September 2007 through 14 October 2007
Reception Thursday September 13 2007, 7-9pm
Curated by Adam Harrison

Works on Painting features three artists that deal with the physical and visual aspects of paint through the utilization of three different mediums - painting, sculpture and photography.

Ben Reeves' paintings of people smoking utilize a relatively flat surface to depict the figures, while the smoke they are producing is represented by almost sculpturally thick blobs of paint, protruding from the canvas. Here the fleeting, ethereal nature of smoke is replaced by a dense, physical mass of oil paint.

Rebecca Donald's "towels" are sculptures created by thickly pouring oil paint mixed with oil onto canvas. When dried, the paint creates a tactile surface that strongly resembles terrycloth towels. Folded or strewn on the floor, the sculptures eschew the illusionistic space of painting in favour of the emulative nature of representational sculpture, albeit through the use of processes and materials inextricably linked to the medium of painting.

A Palette from the Artist's Studio by Evan Lee, shows the underside of a transparent palette used by the artist for his own paintings. "Photographed" by a desktop scanner, the picture shows the accidental traces made while mixing paints for actual paintings. Though the picture resembles an abstract painting - the paint marks recall the gestural brushwork of Robert Rauschenberg or Cy Twombly - it is indeed an accurate representation of physical traces of the painting process.

Though working is different mediums, all three artists engage with the act of applying paint to a surface, highlighting this action's relationship to depiction and considering it in relation to the
production of art in general.

Mike Grill: RECENT PHOTOGRAPHS

2007-07-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

13 July 2007 through 26 August 2007
Opening reception Friday July 13 2007, 7–9:30pm
Curated by Steven Tong and Christopher Brayshaw

A selection of Mike Grill's photographs can be viewed here.

Mike Grill is represented by Jeffrey Boone Gallery, Vancouver.

Jennifer McMackon: NOW AND NEXT MINUTE

2007-05-05T11:18:00.000-07:00

5 May 2007 through 3 June 2007
Opening reception on Sunday 13 May 2007 from 11am-2pm
Curated by Christopher Brayshaw

Jennifer McMackon's website

Jamie Tolagson: ONGOING

2007-03-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

23 March 2007 through 22 April, 2007
Opening Friday 23 March, 2007, 6-9pm
Curated by Christopher Brayshaw

Jamie Tolagson's website

Jamie Tolagson is represented by Jeffrey Boone Gallery, Vancouver

Owen Kydd: MISSION

2007-01-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

January 12 2007 through February 11 2007
Reception Friday January 12, 6 - 9 pm
Curated by Christopher Brayshaw

Owen Kydd is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver

Owen Kydd's website