Abstraction has always carried a certain rigor — an intensity of attention, a discipline of form — and perhaps it’s precisely that rigor that continues to draw us in, even when its gestures feel quietly subversive.
One wonders if the early artists of abstraction — working between 1906 and 1913 — in stripping things down, were also trying to build something up: a new vocabulary for seeing a world already shifting beneath them.
The works gathered here revisit those questions without insisting on answers. What does abstraction make possible now? How might its reductions open spaces for thought rather than close them? And why, in moments of change, do we return to it — not to escape the world, but to reimagine it?These pieces move toward abstraction with a steadiness that feels almost hopeful. They invite us to look closely, to think slowly, to consider that in the rigor of the abstract — even in its subversions — there might be room for a renewed way of seeing, and for the beginnings of what comes next.
Featuring work by Roy Arden, Karin Bubaš, Greg Girard, Graham Gillmore, Colleen Heslin, Jeremy Hof, Emily Hermant, Collin Johanson, Evan Lee, Gailan Ngan, Jonathan Syme, Alex Tedlie-Stursberg, and Stephen Waddell.
Opens November 29th, 2025
Presented at Livingspace, 1706 W 1st Ave, Vancouver
Monday–Friday: 10am to 5:30pm, Saturday: 10am to 5pm