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Hit the Vancouver Art Gallery for a dose of Emily Carr’s swirling cedar forests, and the Bill Reid Gallery for choice Haida pieces. But know that Vancouver is all about contemporary art, thanks to these brilliantly diverse practitioners.
Jeff Wall
The kingpin of the local art scene — and, by some accounts, the godfather of photoconceptualism — Wall is such a hot-ticket item you can’t buy his work in his hometown. His backlit, ornately staged photography can be had through his New York dealers for upwards of a million dollars a pop. If you just want to look: the Vancouver Art Gallery now has more of his work than any other gallery on the planet.
Ian Wallace
A revered member of the city’s photography vanguard, Wallace is best known for large-scale pieces that juxtapose photography with panels of monochrome paint. His teaching in Vancouver is a less tangible legacy: he fostered the meteoric rise of the city’s conceptual art scene. Catriona Jeffries Gallery, 274 E. First Ave., 604-736-1554.
Stan Douglas
The sense of brainy aloofness that typifies contemporary art is forgotten in the historical, deeply political photo work that Douglas has been delivering in recent years. His epic 44-foot mural depicting the Gastown riots will be installed in the Woodward’s atrium this fall. Woodward’s, 108 W. Cordova St.
Gordon Smith
Not all Vancouver artists come with their own textbook. Smith is a popular stalwart of the scene, and his landscape paintings have grown wonderfully abstract and brilliant in recent years. At 90, he’s enjoying a certain resurgence this year, having just won a Governor General’s Award. Equinox Gallery, 2321 Granville St., 604-736-2405.
Angela Grossmann
Of all the artists on this list, her works are the most likely to actually appear on your wall. A member of the famed “Young Romantics” (along with Douglas Coupland and Attila Richard Lukacs), Grossmann creates dreamlike portraits of young women and men imbued with a problematic sensuality; the work is always popular but never “pretty.” Diane Farris Gallery, 1590 W. Seventh Ave., 604-737-2629.
Liz Magor
The sculptures Magor produces could be called the work of a one-trick pony — if we weren’t so enamoured of the trick. Walk around a stack of towels to discover a six-pack of beer hidden in the folds; or a tree trunk stuffed (sushi-style) with a sleeping bag — nothing is as it appears. This spring, she won the Michael Audain Prize for lifetime achievement. Equinox Gallery, 2321 Granville St., 604-736-2405.
Geoffrey Farmer
Any opportunity to walk into a Farmer installation is a gift. His highly elaborate work — including The Last Two Million Years, which involved hundreds of doll-like historical figures on parade — is the sort of exciting art that fascinates children and Tate curators equally. Catriona Jeffries Gallery, 274 E. First Ave., 604-736-1554.
Brian Jungen
Nike shoes are stitched into First Nations masks and golf bags are stacked into looming totem poles. The ever-engaging sculptures that shot Jungen to international fame in recent years mash pop culture and historical artifacts to challenge the time-specific assumptions we have about both. (Hungry for more? Head over to the Equinox Gallery to see Sonny Assu’s hybrid creations, iDrums.) Catriona Jeffries Gallery, 274 E. First Ave., 604-736-1554.
