JUNE 2011

Each summer major galleries and museums try to offer block buster exhibitions that appeal to both locals and tourists.This summer is no exception and the Vancouver Art Gallery is exhibiting three major shows that are drawing in the crowds.

The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art
May 28-September 25, 2011

The most comprehensive exhibition of Surrealist art ever shown in Canada, The Colour of My Dreams: The Surrealist Revolution in Art features 350 works by leading Surrealist artists, including André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Leonora Carrington, Brassaï, André Masson, Man Ray, Edith Rimmington, Wifredo Lam and many others. The exhibition provides a stunning overview of one of most important movements of the 20th century and features a number of signature works by more than 80 artists. This historic exhibition brings together loans from more than sixty of the world’s foremost private collections, museums and galleries, including the Guggenheim, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Israel Museum, the Musée du quai Branly, the Centre Georges Pompidou, and Tate.

Unreal
January 22 -September 5, 2011

Unreal, drawn primarily from the Gallery’s permanent collection and augmented with local loans, considers contemporary artists’ explorations beyond the rational and looks at the ways in which they delve into ideas around desire, fantasy, anxiety and the absurd. Artists include Francis Bacon, Maxwell Bates, Matthew Brown, Marcel Dzama, Jock Macdonald, Myfanwy Macleod, Luanne Martineau, Paul McCarthy, Jason McLean, Eric Metcalfe, Annette Messager, Sandra Meigs, Al Neil, Alfred Pellan, Marina Roy and Cindy Sherman, among many others.

Ken Lum
February 12-September 25, 2011

Vancouver-based artist Ken Lum has developed a complex body of work that includes performances in public spaces, sculptures produced from rented furniture, studio portrait photographs that merge with faux corporate logos, paintings of incomprehensible language, mazes made of mirrors inscribed with texts, and works that mimic the signage found in low-end strip malls.

The most extensive survey of Ken Lum’s work to date, the exhibition features a number of works not previously exhibited in North America, including Mirror Maze with 12 Signs of Depression, produced for Documenta 11 in 2002, House of Realization, produced for the Istanbul Biennale in 2007, and his recent Rorschach Shopkeeper Signs.

Denbigh played a role in the transport of many of the works locally.We have worked with Ken Lum for many years and have handled and shipped his work all over the world.Ken is always quick to point out that he was one of Denbigh's first customers.