Spring/summer exhibition highlights

On March 9, the Vancouver Art Gallery unveiled two new exhibitions drawn from its permanent collection, featuring the work of two important figures in the development of conceptual art. OF & ABOUT POSTERS: THE LAWRENCE WEINER POSTER ARCHIVE (1965–2021) AT THE VANCOUVER ART GALLERY is the most comprehensive presentation of posters by American conceptual icon Lawrence Weiner. Throughout his fifty-year career, Weiner’s text-based works have appeared in museums and galleries on virtually ​any ​surface, as well as outside in the world. Featuring 250 posters, OF & ABOUT POSTERS speaks to the ways Weiner’s work has permeated visual culture at large.

HORIZONS represents a proposal by Canadian artist Garry Neill Kennedy in which a selection of landscape paintings are rehung so that the horizon lines are at the eye level of the artist and—when viewed together—these otherwise disparate landscapes form one continuous horizon line around the gallery walls. This unconventional exhibition offers visitors a unique visual experience as well as an opportunity to witness the realization of Kennedy’s original exhibition proposal for the first time since 1980. 

Later this spring, the Gallery will open Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines. Organized by and travelling from the Brooklyn Museum, this is the first major exhibition dedicated to artists’ zines in North America. Showcasing around 800 zines by over 100 artists, the exhibition traces the rich history of zine making from the 1970s onwards, harnessing the medium’s essential role in communication and community building and its significance to subcultures and avant-garde practices, from punk and street culture to conceptual, queer and feminist art. Featured artists include several Vancouver and Canadian artists among many international peers: Anna Banana, Lisa Baumgardner, Kate Craig, Mark Gonzales, G.B. Jones, Miranda July, Raymond Pettibon, Ho Tam, and many others. 

A month later, visitors will encounter an ode to the monochrome in Black and White and Everything In Between: A Monochrome Journey. Drawn almost entirely from the Gallery’s permanent collection, works by international artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Cy Twombly, Lui Shou Kwan, Anish Kapoor and Ed Ruscha will be shown alongside local practitioners Mina Totino, Evan Lee, Andrew Dadson, Liz Magor and Neil Campbell, among many others. An immersive site-specific installation by light artist James Turrell and a special commission by Vancouver–based artist Khan Lee will be presented in the forecourt and on the Georgia street facade windows. Featuring more than 100 artworks, including late nineteenth-century photography, calligraphy, abstract painting, sculpture and installation, Black and White and Everything In Between will take viewers on a vibrant journey through monochrome, from groupings of black abstraction to white-on-white expression, peppered with playful bursts of bright colour. 

The Gallery will also be celebrating the 15th anniversary of its public art program, Offsite, located at 1100 West Georgia Street. Our featured installation for 2024 will be a major outdoor presentation by celebrated American artist Hank Willis Thomas. In his wide-ranging conceptual art practice, Thomas explores how contemporary society commodifies race and gender and perpetuates cultural stereotypes. Thomas’ powerful stainless-steel sculptures represent disembodied gestures that address notions of protest and social injustice. This is the first solo exhibition of Thomas’ work in Vancouver, bringing a sense of intimacy and humanness amidst a concrete cityscape. 

Launching in June, a new curatorial initiative, 1:1 Artists Select, invites Vancouver–based artists to select one work from the Gallery’s collection to be displayed in dialogue with their own artworks, resulting in a dynamic series of short, pop-up projects in the Gallery’s Forecourt. The Gallery will launch the series with one of Vancouver’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Stan Douglas, and will continue to spotlight both well-known and emerging artists, including Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Liz Magor, Jin-Me Yoon, Russna Kaur and Douglas Coupland. The program is conceived by Eva Respini, Deputy Director & Director of Curatorial Programs, whose aim is to put audiences at the centre and artists at the forefront of the Gallery experience.

For more on what's coming up at the Vancouver Art Gallery, visit vanartgallery.bc.ca.