There is a townhouse across from the imposing figure of the Art Gallery of Ontario. It is quite unexceptional at first glance-inviting, yes; cozy, certainly; but one’s eye is not of itself drawn to this little building. That is, until one spots the painting hanging in its front window: the work of Gordon Wiens.
Welcome to the Bau-Xi Gallery. Its name literally means ‘great gift;’ appropriately, the institution dedicates its walls to the work of emerging artists. It sprang up in Vancouver in the mid-60s, and a decade later migrated to Toronto’s Dundas St. Tien Huang, Bau-Xi’s Toronto curator, maintains that the gallery is entirely flexible to the genre of art that flows in and out of its doors: “As long as my staff and I feel very positive about it, we’ll take it. We’ve had everything from abstract, to figurative, to landscape, to non-representative. If it feels fresh and current, we bring it in.”
It’s no wonder, then, that Huang has chosen to display Wiens’ work from the 1500-odd portfolios he receives each year. The work is not quite like anything one has seen before-comprised completely of geometric shapes, it is non-representative and objective. The palette is one of industrial colours: the paintings all share a combination of cold pewter, rusty brown, dull green and a brazen, radioactive orange, calling to mind the metallic trappings of an eroded train yard.
However, this work is not (as a neglected train yard might be expected to be) cold, lonely, or alienating. Perhaps this is due to the fact that most of Wiens’ forms are translucent, seeming somehow to be perpetually fading in and out of reality. This lucid quality, Huang comments, makes Wiens’ work unique-not only because he employs a stunning technique, but also because it is nearly impossible to replicate.
“He works in acrylic, a medium that doesn’t have the buttery quality you see in [his work],” Huang explains. “I’ve had artists come in and say, ‘Are you sure that’s acrylic?’ I asked him how he does it, but he refuses to tell me.”
Wiens’ technique, along with his rusty palette, suggests the slow and steady wearing down of matter. In fact, erosion is his muse: Wiens takes photos of debris, both natural and man-made, in various states of decay, drawing on the essence of these objects to reveal the transient and fragile condition of all things.
And yet, despite the ephemeral nature of Wiens’ forms, contained within them is a sense of eternity. If anything, the process of erosion is merely a stage in the holistic and cyclical process of life-everything comes, everything goes, and then it all begins again. One receives an odd sense of comfort from this thought, and this communicates itself as an almost spiritual harmony in Wiens’ paintings. Viewers embrace this holistic process as they pace the gallery and are repeatedly confronted with Wiens’ ever-fading yet physically timeless forms.
The calmly assertive paradox of Wiens’ work leaves one feeling inspired, awed, and slightly more religious as one leaves the gallery-a great gift indeed.
For more info on Wiens and the Bau-Xi Gallery, visit www.bau-xi.com.
