Ser Serpas

English Audio Guide | Ser Serpas.m4a

Across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and poetry, Ser Serpas engages with the transient and residual. Performance is central to her wide-ranging practice, with her works manifesting the energy of their creation in unstable and improvised forms. Her paintings, in particular, both depict and are formed by physical distress, their surfaces characterized by a sense of generative deterioration and a deteriorating generation.
 
At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Serpas exhibits a suite of new large-scale paintings: sets of mirroring images made by imprinting or “kissing” one canvas to another while still wet. In contrast to the fleshy portraits in painterly fields for which she is known, these paintings feature a more greyscale palette, dissolving their figures into voids of stained canvas. Flirting in the exhibition’s title with “rent boys” or sex workers, Serpas contends here with the movement of bodies within the narrowing spaces – both public and private – of the contemporary city. 

### Biography
Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Boyle Heights, California) lives and works in New York City and received degrees from Columbia University, New York, and HEAD, Genève. Notable institutional solo exhibitions include presentations at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris; and Swiss Institute, New York. Serpas has also participated in group exhibitions at the Rubell Museum, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; MoMA PS1, New York; the 2024 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2024 El Museo del Barrio Triennial, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Genève; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Punta della Dogana, Venice; and Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland. Serpas has a solo exhibition upcoming at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany.

Ser Serpas - Exhibition Guide - Regular Print

Ser Serpas - Exhibition Guide - Large Print

A painting of a human figure on roughly cut canvas, rendered in a muted palette of browns and greys. ⁠

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Black vinyl text on a white gallery wall leading into an exhibition, introducing the artist “Ser Serpas.” To the left, two white walls create a corridor leading into the gallery.

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rent

Douglas Watt

English Audio Guide | Douglas Watt.m4a

Known for his meticulously rendered sculptures of social architectures — from bars and bookstores to clinics and changerooms — Douglas Watt’s work takes up the complex relationship between public space and the construction of self. Building on legacies of appropriation, assemblage and the readymade, Watt’s practice draws on quotidian materials and forms, producing model, set and prop-like works that engage questions about the performance of everyday life.

In *Mayor of the Village*, Watt brings together a series of new and recent works that find their point of departure in Vancouver’s Davie Village, a historically significant centre of queer life in the city. Loosely staging the gallery as a café, Watt hangs within this environment a “survey” of his miniaturized model works from the past several years. Referencing tropes of the café art display, the resulting show-within-a-show at once evinces the ways that community is imagined and constructed in the public sphere — aesthetically, politically and otherwise — while nodding to the inevitable failures, fragilities and exclusions of these same structures.

### Biography
Douglas Watt (b. 1990, St. Catharines) is an artist living and working in Vancouver's Davie Village on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. He holds a BA (Art History) from Carleton University, Ottawa; an MFA from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; and was a visiting student in Criticism & Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, Toronto. He has presented solo exhibitions at Unit 17, Vancouver (2019), Tara Downs, New York (2021), and Pumice Raft, Toronto (2024). His work has been featured in *Artforum* and *BlackFlash Magazine*. Watt co-edits the publication *Porthole* with Hamish Hardie.

### Acknowledgements
*Douglas Watt: Mayor of the Village* is generously supported by the Deux Mille Foundation.

Douglas Watt - Exhibition Guide - Large Print.pdf

Douglas Watt - Exhibition Guide - Regular Print.pdf

Close up of a miniature of a cafe made of cardboard and textiles seen from above. The floor is red, and there are several wood-patterned tables. There are many tiny details of the kitchen behind the counter.

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The entrance to Douglas Watt's exhibition ”Mayor of the Village” with miniature architectural models on the wall and pendant lights hanging from the ceiling. 

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Seven of Douglas Watt’s architectural models hanging in a gallery.

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Two miniature architectural models “Clinic” and “Café” by Douglas Watt hanging on a wall.

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Five miniature architectural models by Douglas Watt hanging in a row.

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Wide shot of Douglas Watt’s exhibition Mayor of the Village with a coffee cup installation and miniature architectural models on the walls.

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Two coffee cup-shaped sculptures hanging on a wall with a rough painting of a coffee cup.

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Close-up of “Mug” by Douglas Watt, a sculpture made with mesh and fabric resembling a coffee cup.

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Detail of “Mug” by Douglas Watt showing the plywood, foil, and feather objects underneath the mesh exterior.

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The works “Back Rest” and “Menu” by Douglas Watt on a wall.

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Detail of the installation “Menu” by Douglas Watt showing small black paillettes with letters spelling menu items on a black wall.

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Detail of the light installation “Gels” by Douglas Watt with a light shining through a rainbow filter.

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The works “Back Rest” and “Menu” on a wall in the Douglas Watt exhibition Mayor of the Village.

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Mayor of the Village

Rafik Greiss

English Audio Guide | Rafik Greiss.m4a

In Rafik Greiss’ work, we encounter a state between wakefulness and dreaming. Driven by the artist’s itinerant drifting within and across disparate urban landscapes, Greiss’ photographs, installations and videos reflect deeply on the complexities of movement and time, pursuing an impression of simultaneous distance and proximity.
 
In *Public Image*, Greiss presents a pair of photographic projects across CAG’s public sites. On the gallery’s façade is an arrangement of images from *By the Highway*, a series made in collaboration with Ser Serpas, depicting her creation of impromptu, temporary sculptures. At Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Greiss has installed photographs of glass vitrines taken in the Agricultural Museum in Giza. Responding to the function of the display case to make its contents visible yet physically inaccessible, these deliberately ambiguous photographs double the station’s windows, taking glass itself – as opposed to what it reveals and encloses – as their subject. 

### Biography
Rafik Greiss (b. 1997) is an Egyptian artist based in Paris working across photography, installation and time-based media. His practice reflects on transformation, memory and the shifting states of images and objects through a formally and technically diverse approach that moves between digital and analogue processes. Often described as atmospheric, provocative and sensual, his work is driven by what Mitchell Anderson calls a “commitment to sensation rather than theme or medium.” His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Balice Hertling, Paris (2024, 2021), as well as in group exhibitions at the Istanbul Biennial (2025); Simian, Copenhagen (2025); Kunsthalle Zürich (2024); and the Swiss Institute, New York, with Ser Serpas (2023). His work is held in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pinault Collection, Paris; Louis Vuitton Collection, Paris; and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris.

Rafik Greiss - Exhibition Guide - Regular Print

Rafik Greiss - Exhibition Guide - Large Print

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A gallery's exterior windows installed with photographs of an artist balancing furniture on top of each other.

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A shot of the exterior of a gallery with a greyscale photo installed across multiple windowpanes, showing shelves and ladders placed in a wooded area.

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A shot of the front entrance of a gallery showing glass doors to the lobby and a photo installed in the window to the left. The photo shows several objects including a red tarp balanced against each other in an abandoned industrial building.

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A gallery's exterior windows installed with photographs of an artist crouching in a tire and lying under a red tarp.

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A wide shot of a gallery with multiple photos installed in the glass windows. The apartment building above it and trees planted in front are visible.

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A wide angle shot of an above-ground entrance to a subway station with greyscale photographs installed on the glass walls.

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The glass exterior of the above-ground entrance to a subway station with a greyscale photograph of clear boxes installed over the glass.

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Public Image

We’re working on our [upcoming exhibitions](/exhibitions-and-events/upcoming), opening on April 17. [Visit our archive](/exhibitions-and-events/archive/all) to see past exhibitions and events.

Closed for installation

Rachelle Sawatsky

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In July, we welcome Rachelle Sawatsky to speak on the work of Ser Serpas.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Rachelle Sawatsky is an artist based in Vancouver and Los Angeles known primarily for their abstract paintings that explore materiality, lyricism, and instability both perceptual and structural. Sawatsky’s ongoing writing practice takes the form of ceramics, drawings and parallel texts as a means to explore practices of description and observation. 

Recent solo exhibitions include Night Gallery and Artist Curated Projects in Los Angeles and the Western Front Gallery in Vancouver. Their work has been included in group exhibitions, at Moran Moran in Los Angeles, the Tate St. Ives, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Galerie Mezzanin in Vienna. Their artwork has been written about in Artforum, Frieze, Art Review, Canadian Art and the LA Times. Their writing has been published in numerous publications including catalogues by the Hammer Museum, Artspeak Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Night Gallery, the Capilano Review and BookWorks UK. Sawatsky is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University. 

 Portrait of Rachelle Sawatsky standing outside in a black t-shirt and gold chain with their hands in their pockets.

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Rachelle Sawatsky on Ser Serpas

Saturday Session

Join CAG’s Assistant Curator Aretha Pereira and TD Assistant Curator of Programming Daniel Pickering for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.


A gallery space with two large unstretched canvas paintings of nude figures hanging on staggered walls.

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with Aretha Pereira and Daniel Pickering

Curatorial Tour

Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In August, we welcome Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez to speak on the work of Rafik Greiss. No advance registration required.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez is an artist working with photography and film/video. Recent solo presentations include David Peter Francis, New York City (2024); Center for Cultural & Artistic Practices, Winnipeg (2021); and Terremoto/La Postal, Mexico City (2019). His work has been a part of group exhibitions, most recently, Luhring Augustine, New York City (2024); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2023), and the Centre for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2022). His work has been featured in *Aperture, Artforum, Border Crossings*, the *New York Times*, and is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2019 he was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture.

Portrait of Gonzalo crossing their arms over their chest in front of a green background.

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Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez on Rafik Greiss

The Contemporary Art Gallery is delighted to announce the 2026 CAG Gala, a celebratory four-course dinner helmed by one of Vancouver’s most prominent chefs.

Led this year by Gus Stieffenhofer-Brandson, Executive Chef at Published on Main, the evening opens with a cocktail hour, followed by a seated dinner and live and silent auctions. Bringing together arts patrons, business leaders, philanthropists, and friends from across the region in support of CAG, this one-of-a-kind event is not to be missed.

Friday, November 6, 2026
The Kent, 534 Cambie Street
Tickets starting at $450

Patron presale: July 23
General onsale: July 30

Proceeds support CAG’s educational and artistic programming, which the gallery has been committed to offering free of charge for more than fifty years.

Can’t join us for the gala, but want to support CAG?

[Make a donation](https://contemporaryartgallery.app.neoncrm.com/np/clients/contemporaryartgallery/donation.jsp?campaign=209& "button")

For sponsorship or ticket inquiries, please contact support@cagvancouver.org.

Exhibitions

Talks & Events