Past

Introducing Rob Nicholls

Equinox Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of painter Rob Nicholls. Nicholls’ landscapes embody the transcendental effect of the natural world on the human psyche. Through textured brushstrokes, illuminated colours, and loose washes, his paintings are a synthesis of flora, fauna and geological forms that are charged with atmospheric conditions. These images emerge from his imagination and memories of a childhood surrounded by the lush vegetation of Vancouver Island.

His ethereal landscapes evoke visions of worlds that are beyond the physical and enter the realm of the subjective imagination. Expansive and kaleidoscopic, Nicholls’ works do not present a single spatial or temporal perspective; rather each of his environments offers multiple qualities of light, from the vibrant colours of dawn to the muted tones of dusk.

Technically, the paintings are created through a meticulous process of developing a specific palette that is renewed for each painting, maintaining an exceedingly smooth surface on his canvas that allows paint to flow freely, and building up spatial depth with the feathery strokes of colour from a wide-ranging and nuanced palette. While inspired by historical artists who have presented the natural world as a place of mystery and intrigue—from Jean-Honoré Fragonard to Charles Burchfield—Nicholls approaches painting through his own distinct and fluid language that explores the tensions between reality and imagination.

Rob Nicholls received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and his MFA from the University of Waterloo. He has participated in several exhibitions across Canada, including “Storm Island” as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Nicholls currently lives and works in Toronto.

For more details, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com

Angela Grossmann
With Themselves

Expressive, fluid, and frequently elusive, Angela Grossmann’s works may be thought of as traditional portraiture, but in fact she takes the genre in new directions. While Grossmann’s depictions have a remarkable human likeness, more significantly she brings psychological insights into the representation of the female as visualized in western society. Grossmann depicts the body because she is empowered by it and familiar with it—through observations, memories, and lived experience—and has now been addressing it in her studio practice for over four decades. As a woman, she is able to externalize the complexities of the desiring gaze, bringing to the fore representations of people, that not only celebrate beauty, joy, and the maternal, but also embody melancholy, introspection, as well as a subject’s own desires—in other words, unveiling the many dimensions of femininity.

Angela Grossmann: With Themselves continues at Equinox Gallery until Saturday, February 18th.

Adad Hannah
at the Fairmont Pacific Rim

Adad Hannah is known for his photographs and videos that explore the cinematic potential of tableaux vivants: a genre of performance featuring costumed models remaining as still as possible. Referencing famous art historical paintings and restaging them using contemporary technologies, Hannah’s work refreshes the relationship between the subject of the artwork and the viewer, encouraging us to consider our own bodies in relation to those in each image.

In addition to Hannah’s interest in re-considering historical painting today through the lens of photography, works in this exhibition also focus on his collaborative, community-based approach to art making. Presented on the main floor are three works from Hannah’s project Blackwater Ophelia, inspired by the 1852 painting Ophelia, a famous work with great attention paid to the natural world by the British realist painter John Everett Millais. On the second floor is a large-scale installation based on Picasso’s Guernica, one of the most iconic anti-war paintings of all times, as well as selected works from Hannah’s series The Decameron Retold. In each elaborately staged body of work, the presence of props, stage supports, and hand-painted elements highlight each work’s construction, emphasizing the process of creating each image.

Adad Hannah was born in New York in 1971, spent his childhood in Israel and England, and moved to Vancouver in the early 1980s. His work is represented in public and private collections around the world, and has been exhibited extensively in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, West Africa, China, South Korea, Australia, Russia, Argentina, and Brazil. Hannah holds a PhD and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal, and a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver.

Khan Lee
Lost and Found

For this exhibition, Lee presents a body of works in disparate media, encouraging viewers to contemplate how materials and devices can be experienced in profoundly diverse ways. In the exhibition, a Super8 film measures both time and distance; a dizzying display of finely painted realist watercolours of Zoom backgrounds comments on how individuals choose to represent themselves through their belongings; and common objects, such as men’s shirts and paper cups, offer a poetic musing on how everyday phenomena can easily be overlooked. In recontextualizing quotidian objects and moments, Lost and Found rekindles the surprising and often intangible dynamics of everyday life.

For a list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com or (604) 736-2405.

Jack Kenna

A multifaceted artist, Jack Kenna learned the aesthetics and techniques of stained glass from his mother, an accomplished artist in this realm. Drawing from his repeated experience of moving houses and studios over the years, Kenna has inadvertently collected dozens of plastic milk crates, using them for storage as well as makeshift DIY furniture. And now, these versatile objects serve as the basis for his art objects, accruing even greater value and purpose. The artist removes one side of each milk crate, refitting it with stained glass compositions that combine elements of Minimalism, Op art, and hard-edge abstraction in their design. Some sculptures are stacked into columns, others are randomly placed on the floor, while still others are lit from behind suggesting illuminated church windows or light boxes used in contemporary advertising (and subsequently in photography). By manipulating and combining such paradoxical materials, Kenna’s sculptures embody strength and fragility in surprising, witty, and elegant ways.

For a list of available works, please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com 

Devon Knowles
Gone and Going

Equinox Gallery is pleased to present Gone and Going, Devon Knowles’ first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Devon Knowles’ new body of work the engineering of materials is implicit as both the subject and process of the work. Through a sustained process of observation, Knowles documents urban sites and neighbourhoods in transition, intuitively noting the recurrence of colours and patterns present in her chosen locations. Her walks through neighbourhoods are filtered through multiple technologies, as she fragments and reassembles the changing landscapes into aluminum, fused glass, and stained-glass compositions. In describing her work the artist notes that, “texture, colour, their source and the small variations in their physical dimensions are all important. Texture can blow out the colour as the physical light glares on its surface, making it impenetrable from certain points of view. What becomes evident at that moment, where it is all surface and you cannot see beyond the glare of external light bouncing, is a temporary boundary.” This idea of boundaries permeates Knowles’ work where her thoughtful use of materials drives the careful examination of spaces, edges, and their human presence.

Knowles has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions in Berlin, Toronto, Brooklyn and Vancouver. Group exhibitions include such venues as Vancouver Art Gallery, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, and SFU Gallery, Charles H. Scott Gallery, the Western Front, Or Gallery and Unit Pitt, Vancouver. Knowles has participated in residency programs in Europe and she has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, British Columbia Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts and was awarded the Mayor’s Arts Award as an Emerging Artist in Public Art. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria is currently a faculty member at Langara College, snəw̓eyəɬ leləm̓. Knowles’ work is included in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Devon Knowles lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.

For a list of available works please contact the gallery at info@equinoxgallery.com or (604) 736 – 2405

Gordon Smith
A Painter’s Legacy

Gordon Smith: A Painter’s Legacy opens on September 10th, 2022 at Equinox Gallery on Commercial Street in Vancouver.

Angela Teng
New Works

Equinox Galley is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Vancouver-based painter Angela Teng. Since graduating from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Teng’s contemporary engagement with the historical medium of painting has led to a unique style centered around challenging the nature of paint and its supporting structures.

Angela Teng considers the histories of craft and textiles to connect the dualities of painting (painting as an object vs. painting as a process). The artist began this new body of work through a thrifting process where second-hand stores were scoured for incomplete or unwanted needlepoint patterns and designs. Historically devalued due to its association with “women’s work,” needlepoint is one of the oldest-known forms of canvas work where coloured yarn or embroidery thread is stitched through a pre-planned design on a stiff, open weave canvas. For Teng, the open texture provides the ideal opening to create her own works based on the existing designs but using the glistening and oozing material of oil paint rather than a continuous length of thread. The creators of the needlepoint patterns remain anonymous, and by re-using them and adding to them, Teng brings contemporary validation to their work and connects herself to the unknown artists of the past. The intimate scale is also to be noted in these works. As these are based on a historically domestic craft, the small scale is a counter-point to the large canvases of the 20^thcentury abstract expressionists.  Through a thoughtful approach that challenges ideas around traditionally feminized artistic labour, Teng’s paintings are enlivened by a visual imagination that highlights the process of production while engaging in contested conversations about the distinctions between craft and fine art, textile and painting, labour and leisure.

Angela Teng: New Works opens on September 10th, 2022 at Equinox Gallery on Commercial Street in Vancouver.

50 Years | 50 Stories

Equinox Gallery marks its 50th anniversary in 2022. To celebrate this institutional milestone and offer a glimpse into aspects of gallery life from the past 5 decades, we present 50 Years | 50 Stories, an eclectic mix of artworks that trigger significant triumphs and challenges, personal anecdotes, and creative strategies. As one of the anchors of the nation’s commercial art sector with over 400 exhibitions to its credit, we have represented many of Canada’s top talents in tandem with international artworld giants. Through a selection of works by artists who have been featured at the gallery, this exhibition is an opportunity to consider the gallery’s focus on developing artists’ careers in the context of larger and ever-shifting art world narratives.

While much has changed at the gallery over the past 50 years, our long-term relationships with artists and collectors (both public and private) remain central to the gallery’s ethos. It is by nurturing such deep-rooted connections that we are able to contribute to the significant role art plays in enriching people’s lives.

Thank you for your support over the past 50 years. We look forward to the next 50.

Andy, Sophie, Hannah, Chantelle, Lulu

CLICK HERE to read the stories

June Group Exhibition

For the month of June, we are happy to share with you a curated selection of contemporary works brought together to generate conversations around colour, shadow, texture and form. This exhibition highlights works by artists with new connections to Equinox Gallery as well as those with long-standing relationships with the gallery.

This exhibition includes the works of Sonny Assu, Kim Dorland, Marten Elder, Gathie Falk, Jack Kenna, Gwenessa Lam, Erin McSavaney, Ben Reeves, Takao Tanabe, Angela Teng, Renée Van Halm, Neil Wedman, and Etienne Zack.

For a list of available works please contact us at info@equinoxgallery.com or (604) 736 – 2405.