Opening March 1st
March 2nd - April 14th 2024

Sophia Boutsaki’s show, Mirrored Hearts, aims to explore the exchange of meaning within our social tapestry. Through multiple mediums, including stained glass, metal sculptures, delicate drawings, and intimately scaled paintings, the exhibition contemplates relationships, intimacy, distance, memory, and childhood. 

Boutsakis employs repeated motifs in each work that reference architectural barricades like railings, fences, and window coverings, traditionally used to both protect and decorate spaces. Elements taken from these reference architectural sources are extracted to become symbols within themselves. Hearts, diamonds, stars, butterflies, bows and flowers hold their own context and narrative, suggesting themes of love, nurturement, growth and strength.

Formally, Boutsakis navigates the tension between high art and hobbyist craft, employing self-taught, amateur fabrication techniques and low brow materials such as soldering, welding, stained glass, steel rod, galvanized wire, and chain. Conceptually, the artist offers a nuanced exploration of how symbols and aesthetics contribute to the construction of identity, particularly how decoration and beautification are associated with the performance of gender and femininity.

Opening May 19, 7:00-9:00
May 20th - July 1st 2023

The Art Shop presents a new group exhibition of local emerging artists, Familiar Faces, exploring portraits as a point of immediate and profound connection. Each participating artist presents their unique interpretation of portraiture, from capturing the emotions held in a figure to revealing a personal story through a smile or gaze.

As people, we continuously search for familiar faces in our surroundings, whether as a source of comfort or curiosity. We might find ourselves seeking out the recognizable, finding the contours of a body in a stone, or discovering a friendly face in the bark of a tree.

Through this show, we aim to highlight the individual beauty of those around us through the inclusion of different mediums and styles of contemporary portraiture. Familiar Faces invites the viewer to find moments of reflection and appreciate the value of human connection. 

Participating Artists:

Risa Witten, Mads, Elisa Malo, Merlin Boissonneault, Wendy Hanlon, Sophia Boutsakis, Cole Bazin, Han Wang, Logan Kenler

Opening Friday Feb 3rd, 7-9pm
Weekends only, Feb 3-March 12

The Art Shop presents Luck, Coincidence, Chance, a group show that aims to explore the profound beauty of life’s serendipitous moments. The participating artists reflect on the curatorial theme of the show by involving their practice in somewhat mystical ideas - forces beyond our understanding - and trusting that they might highlight a unique perspective of their work.

All encounters with Luck, Coincidence or Chance, are personal and special, built upon the layering of a seemingly infinite series of past moments and the individual lens through which we view their culmination. Each encounter is wondrous in its singularity. While impossible to replicate or force into existence, they are more common than we might think. The artists of Luck, Coincidence, Chance, attempt to appreciate the presence of these moments by incorporating their influence into works of art.

The show creates a space to give meaning to and appreciate what may seem random. Each artist’s work preserves an encounter with Luck, Coincidence or Chance, much like an insect in amber, allowing us to peer inside the uniquely intricate tangle of circumstances that brought it to life.

Opening Friday November 4th, 7-9pm
Weekends only Nov 4th-20th

Curated by Jill Taylor

Ketty Zhang’s solo show features a collection of new works across different media, centering around the theme of elevators.

The elevator sits at the intersection of a few topics the artist is interested in: corporate culture, transience, transition, and day-to-day spaces and materials. The elevator as a space brings out a layered sentiment, as it is the site for different types of interactions: chance encounters, small talk, awkward silence, and elevator pitches. For some, it might trigger certain psychological responses, like claustrophobia, germophobia, or even a kinky obsession with surrendering control in such a  confined, surveilled place. 

It is a “space within a space” as described by Michel Foucault - an urban limbo with its own unspoken rules as we head to our destination. As we emerge from the elevator, our social roles change; we become an employee, a customer, a student, a parent, a patient. Parts of our identity that were present before the ride become less apparent as the doors close. This exhibition explores multiple facets of the human psyche as they relate to the elevator as a site of introspection, fantasy, and change.

We are thrilled to have found a space within VMF’s City Centre Artist Lodge. Our purpose and values perfectly align with this incredible space that has been converted from an iconic motel to an epicentre of creativity, bringing art to people and people to art in an accessible way.  

We have opened our doors to the public on the weekends presenting TAS Artists and fellow guest creatives, hoping our presence will become an entry point into supporting local artists by creating connections through a series of mini shows.

Having a dedicated space on the traditional unceeded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations is a true privilege, but it also comes with great responsibility. We will work hard to bring art to the people in a meaningful, accessible and enjoyable way, and keep supporting the emerging art community.