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Vancouver has proven to be a petri dish for some of the most exciting contemporary work in the art world. Here, six artists that should be on your radar.
By Michael Harris
Gallery hopping in Vancouver is a fullcontact sport. The contemporary art scene is bolstered by some of the world's heavyweights — Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham — but local galleries consistently offer high-level work from more affordable artists, too. Begin your tour by strolling South Granville, where a dozen healthy galleries are tightly strung together — there's a Starbucks on every block for support. Below are some hot names to get you started.
 Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, New Chiefs, courtesy Buschlen Mowatt gallery Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun artfully mashes pop culture with his First Nations heritage.Along with art star Brian Jungen (famous for wrestling Air Jordans into ceremonial masks), Yuxweluptun has made a name for himself by artfully mashing pop culture with his First Nations heritage. Coast Salish design elements receive radical updating when corporate suits and hip colouring invade the visual vocabulary of a culture often assumed to be outside of the contemporary world. Unless you're shopping with a museum's budget, stick to his works on paper and eschew the larger canvasses. Price Tags: $4,000 to $80,000. At Buschlen Mowatt |
Scot McFarland, Admiral's House, courtesy Clark Gallery Scott McFarland's astounding garden series.Vancouver's famed photo-conceptual school hits a new peak with the technically astounding garden pictures of young McFarland. Multiple exposures are painstakingly stitched together to create a single unreal moment in time. A reserved spot in a 2007 show at New York's MoMA makes this the year McFarland transforms from Bright Young Thing to a blinding light in the larger art world. There's a tight waiting list for these prints, which run in highly limited editions, but that isn't deterring savvy collectors from lining up. Get in there while you still can. Price Tags: $4,500 to $28,000 and rising. At Monte Clark Gallery |
 Lisa Birke, Great Canadian Ethnic Pride, courtesy Bau-Xi Gallery Lisa Birke's images play up kitschy Canadiana.Forget the decorative Canadian moose mug. And stop hunting for a cheap box of smoked salmon. If you're looking for an intelligent keepsake of Canadian travels, Lisa Birke is your woman. Crammed with playful Canadian iconography, Birke's latest canvasses harness knee-jerk responses to kitsch imagery and question the way a nation markets itself. A trucker pees in a snow bank, a woman writhes erotically in ropes of maple syrup, and it's all done with Birke's signature acid humour. Price Tags: $1,500 to $18,000. At Bau-Xi Gallery |
Left to Right: Luc Bernard, Brewing Storm; Trincomali Chanel; courtesy of the Atelier Gallery Luc Bernard revives the art of encaustic painting.At the outset of a promising career, Bernard has revived the ancient practice of encaustic painting—pigment is applied to the canvas in thick layers of melted wax. Fluid and mutable landscapes, defined by brooding smudges of colour, are the (reasonably priced) result. Price Tags: All around $2,500. At Atelier Gallery |
Fred Herzog, Three Theatres, courtesy Equinox Gallery Fred Herzog captured Vancouver in its flashier days.Gotta get a Herzog. From nowhere, a swarm of Vancouver history nuts and foreign collectors have descended on the Equinox Gallery to snatch up Herzog's vibrant prints detailing city life in the '50s and '60s. Whether it's the neon grandeur of a lost Granville Street or the prosaic simplicity of a family chain smoking on a West End patio, these history-stuffed beauties ring out in Kodachrome's saturated colours. In vogue today, Herzog's work spent decades languishing in obscurity before the Vancouver Art Gallery, capitalizing on civic nostalgia, gave him a major exhibit at the start of 2007. Price Tags: $1,500 to $5,000. At Equinox Gallery |
Angela Grossmann, Bitter Sweet, mixed media on watercolour, courtesy the Diane Farris Gallery Angela Grossmann's haunting images have made her one of Canada's most sought-after painters.Since being dubbed one of Vancouver's "Young Romantics" in 1985 (when she shared studio space with an unknown Douglas Coupland), Grossmann's haunting portraits of teenage girls have secured her a place among Canada's most soughtafter painters. What's more, Grossmann has the rare distinction of being a wellrespected artist whose work is…well, attractive. While many of her paintings toy with a twisted Spice Girls feminism, those ironic politics don't keep her work from being unabashedly gorgeous, too. Bonus: she works in such a range of scales that most budgets can find a piece that fits. Price Tags: $1,600 to $15,000. At Diane Farris Gallery |
Editors Choice: Discovering the East
Along with being Vancouver's first residential neighbourhood, Strathcona is home to dozens of artists who open their studios once a year for the Eastside Cultural Crawl. If you're here November 16 to 18, lucky you — the tour is free, and you'll find a map online (if you’re tight for time, hit Parker Street Studios: over 40 artists reside in the old industrial building). Don't despair if you're here another time: the website runs year round, profiling the artists on the tour and providing contact info for those that strike your fancy. Don't miss Judson Beaumont's Straight Line designs in Parker Street Studios: he crafts furniture straight out of the pages of Dr. Seuss. 604-817-9130.
