Detail from Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: “Neo Reservation Landscape Painting and Ovoidism,” on view now at Arsenal Contemporary Art New York (photo by Greg Carideo courtesy of Arsenal Contemporary Art New York)
New work by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun in New York
“I have been an artist all my life. It’s been my life goal to portray the negative and positive realities of this world. I’m interested in recording history: residential schools; worldwide concerns, global warming, deforestation, and pollution; humanity, humour, and existentialism,” said Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun in 2016.
Based in British Columbia, Yuxweluptun (pronounced yook-WAIL-upten) has been creating his surrealistic, colourful paintings around these themes for more than 40 years, exploring what he calls “visionism,” animated landscapes and abstractions based on oviod shapes.
His latest exhibition, Neo Reservation Landscape Painting and Ovoidism is now through March 16 at Arsenal Contemporary Art in New York, in collaboration with Macaulay + Co.
“Yuxweluptun is an important history painter. He hasn’t pursued the vintage chops of a Kent Monkman, but he’s achieved something uniquely potent: all the authority of a cultural specificity but articulated by a modernist,” said Marc Mayer, Arsenal Contemporary Art New York’s director and the former director of the National Gallery of Canada, in an Instagram post earlier this year.
“If they are opaque to many viewers, his pictures have a clarity verging on astringence. Their subject matter is usually dark, but never grim, let alone maudlin.”
Graduating from what is now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting in 1983, Yuxweluptun has exhibited his work in museums and galleries around the world, including the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Heard Museum in Arizona, the Philbrooke Museum of Art in Oklahoma and the National Gallery of Canada. Beverly Cramp interviewed him for Galleries West in 2016, when the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology showed a 30-year survey of his work.
Joan Balzar, “Silver Scape,” 1962-1965, chrome aluminum and acrylic on canvas, 53" x 90" (courtesy of Shawn Macmillan and Griffin Art Projects, photo by Ken Dyke)
West Coast Legends Celebrated in New Exhibition
Michael Morris died in 2022 and Joan Balzar in 2016, but for decades, the two were a major influence on the West Coast — and, indeed, the Canadian — art scene.
A new exhibition at Griffin Art Projects seeks to celebrate and remember their contribution.
Intersecting Orbits: Michael Morris and Joan Balzar is on view now through May 5 and features roughly 90 pieces from their art, archives and collections. Personal photos from both artists’ archives are also included.
Fascinated by science, technology and the atomic age, Balzar used neon, metallic powders, aluminum and Plexiglas in her works. A graduate of what is now known as the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she taught at the school after graduation as well as the University of British Columbia, Douglas College and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Much of her work was lost in a fire in 1970, but her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Seattle Art Museum, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Born in England, Morris created art that included photography, installation video and performance as part of the Fluxus movement. He worked briefly as a curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1965 and went on to become a co-founder of Image Bank, a mail art repository and archive. His work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and The Victoria and Albert Museum in England, as well as the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art and the National Film Board of Canada.
Miguel Matthews, “Family Portrait,” 2023, oil on canvas (installation photo by Charles Cousins, courtesy of the Art Gallery of Alberta)
Celebrating Edmonton's African-Canadian Communities Through Art
The Art Gallery of Alberta is celebrating Black History Month now through March 3, with the 18th annual 5 Artists 1 Love exhibition. This celebration of Edmonton’s African-Canadian communities is curated by Darren W. Jordan and includes work from both emerging and established artists.
This year’s artists: Macha Abdallah works with acrylic on canvas, digital art, mixed media and mural art. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Anthony Chinedu Ezeifedi creates work that encompasses advertising, printing, painting, charcoal drawing, illustration, design, and branding. From Eldoret, Kenya, Martin Kwame has been working as a photographer for more than a decade, while Miguel Matthews grew up in New York and moved to Edmonton, where he works with different mediums including watercolour, acrylic, spray paint, airbrush, oil paint and ink on skin. Lorelle Diane Whittingham's sculptural practice — which includes clay, found objects and light — draws inspiration from her background as a Canadian and her Mauritian and Jamaican heritage. Special events, film screenings and talks are also planned to mark the month at the gallery. ■
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