Victor Penner Opening Reception

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Victor John Penner, "Egress," 2016

archival pigment print, 48" x 60". Courtesy of the artist.

Opening Reception: March 28, 7 – 9 p.m.

Artist Talk: April 15, 2 p.m.

As a youth in the early 1970s, Victor John Penner moved from East Vancouver to West Vancouver’s British Pacific Properties. The move to this suburban neighbourhood, encroaching upon the wilderness of the North Shore Mountains, would shape the direction of his life and work.

Within this context, Victor John Penner’s series of new works, District* (*based on a true story), creates a mise-en-scène of West Vancouver, offering a counter-narrative to landscape/nature-based art through photographs of seemingly discordant scenes.

Penner’s large-scale photographs of urban and suburban spaces, all marked by human interaction, are taken with a 4x5 camera, producing a hyper-clarity that is vital to his work in creating a sense of unease.

Victor John Penner captures the incidental—stairs in a parking lot, a shopping cart, a Super 8 camera on a coffee table—that invite the viewer to consider how culture is built through day-to-day experience, events, and myths, provoking us to consider why the West Coast pervades our perception and seduces so many.

While printmaking (silkscreen), filmmaking, and graphic/object design are all part of Penner’s oeuvre, since 1992 he has concentrated almost exclusively on the photographic image. His intuitive street style and immediate approach has been recognized in Applied Arts, Communication Arts, Graphis, PDN, Photo Media and PRINT periodicals. His works have been exhibited at the Ansel Adams Center for Photography in San Francisco and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York. Recent exhibitions include Artist’s Depiction (2015, Gordon Smith Gallery, permanent collection), SD/45 (2014, WV Museum, group show) and Not Safe to Occupy (2014, Gordon Smith Gallery, and 2013, Gallery 295).

Victor John Penner currently lives and works in North Vancouver.

The exhibition is curated by Darrin Morrison, and offered in conjunction with the Capture Photography Festival.

A 72-page full-colour book featuring works in the exhibition is available for sale at the Museum.