Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of visiting the Vancouver Art Gallery and seeing its three stunning exhibitions: Cézanne and the Modern, The Poetics of Space, and Unscrolled.
On the first floor of the gallery until the May 18, you can find impressionist paintings collected between the 1940s and ’50s by Henry and Rose Pearlman.
As indicated by its name, this exhibition is focused largely on works done by painter Paul Cézanne. Working with materials such as watercolours, Cézanne pushed his bright colours outside of his sketched lines as a reaction to the complexities of real life — he was building his works out of pure colour.
All of the pieces on display in this collection showcase artists who were reacting to the invention of the photograph — once real life could be captured in that form, painters and sculptors began to challenge themselves to create their own vividly colourful and often over-exaggerated impressions of life.
The Cézanne exhibition features works that cannot be found anywhere other than this tour collection — they are usually housed at Princeton University. I would recommend checking this exhibition out for the rare opportunity to see this stunning collection.
Until April 6 on the second floor of the gallery you will find Unscrolled, which includes a collection of works by 10 currently active post-modern Chinese artists who are both challenging and working within confines of traditional Chinese art and history. I found this exhibit extremely stunning; all the works pushed boundaries in their own way to create memorable pieces addressing Chinese culture and heritage.
In one room, you can find an interactive piece entitled Bang by famous Chinese activist and artist Ai Weiwei. This piece is made up of almost 900 antique chairs that were traditionally found in Chinese homes due to their resilient structure and ease of creation. Needless to say, Bang is completely breathtaking. Visitors are free to walk through the art and interact with it as it tells a story of Chinese culture now lost.
On the third and final floor, until May 24, you can find The Poetics of Space, an exhibition curated around the investigation of space and our place within it. The artists featured in this collection range from historical to current. Because of this, each piece or set of pieces is unique. The viewer is given a wide range of styles, mediums, and outlooks via the varying perspectives of each artist.
It is clear that while each of the current exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery are able to stand alone, they all benefit from one another’s themes and reception.
A walk through the gallery starts with some of the early beginnings of the rejection of standards and practices in art and the world. You are then led into a new age of self-reflection that looks back while striving forward, and you end with varying perceptions on the world around us and the ways in which artists throughout history have challenged our perspectives. What a wonderful way to spend a day.
