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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Admission always free

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12 pm - 6 pm
ArchiveExhibition
1 Apr 22until28 Aug 22

Michelle Bui

Mutable Materialism

CAG Façade and offsite at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station

A photographic work by Michelle Bui. Diffuse colours and indecipherable plant matter appear beneath a layer of wrinkled plastic film. Sparse flowers and petals are sprinkled across the picture plane.

Michelle Bui, Envelop #1, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Bringing both a painterly and sculptural approach to her photographic practice, Montreal-based artist Michelle Bui operates within the visual language of the still life. Working with an array of everyday, seemingly unremarkable materials, Bui creates assemblages for the camera, building alluring scenes through processes of accumulating, merging, manipulating, and resituating.

In Mutable Materialism, an exhibition presented on the CAG façade and at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Bui offers two new suites of images, each a reflection on the relationships between sense, sensation and desire. Whether referencing the seductive language of advertising, the tactility of the touch-screen, or the conventions of commercial packaging and display, Bui’s works engage and confuse, coaxing incongruous forms into conversation with one another to invite reflection on the ways we connect with and consume objects and images alike.

Biography

Michelle Bui is a Montreal-based artist working in photography and sculpture. Her research revolves around the inseparable conjuncture between material culture and identity, opening it to a shifted place where sensory identity can unfold. Recent solo exhibitions include Objects for an Audience, Galerie Rad Hourani, Montreal (2020); Spilled Plenitude, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2020); Centerfold, Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2019); Plein Soleil, Circa, Montreal (2019); Pool of Plenty, Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal (2018). Her work was also included in group shows at Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montreal; Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University, Newark; Projet Pangée, Montreal; and Vu Photo, Quebec City. Bui completed her MA at Université du Québec à Montréal and at Beaux-arts de Paris, and her BFA at Concordia University.

Acknowledgements

Michelle Bui: Mutable Materialism is produced in partnership with Capture Photography Festival. The project is co-curated by Julia Lamare, Acting Associate Curator, Contemporary Art Gallery and Chelsea Yuill, Assistant Curator, Capture Photography Festival. Works at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station are presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program – InTransit BC.