There’s a host of art on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery right now, and one of their summer exhibitions is Black and White and Everything In Between: A Monochrome Journey, which opened on June 9, 2024. Featuring 60 international artists and over 100 artworks, the exhibition takes visitors on a reflective journey through the history of monochrome—from 19th-century photography to calligraphy, abstract painting, sculpture, and a new commission for the exhibition. The show guides audiences through monochromatic artworks organized according to colour, beginning with works that are all-black, then all-white, to rooms with works in vibrant shades of blue, red, or yellow, and, finally, finishing with multi-colour.
Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Senior Curator, Diana Freundl with Curatorial Assistant, Joanne So Jeong Chung, the exhibit draws primarily from the gallery’s permanent collection through a variety of styles, genres, themes and mediums. Viewers have the opportunity to see many artworks not regularly on view. The exhibition highlights the breadth of renowned international artists in the collection, such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, Cy Twombly, Lui Shou-Kwan, Anish Kapoor, Agnes Martin, and Rachel Whiteread, and, equally, the prominent local artists in the collection, including Gathie Falk, Mina Totino, Evan Lee, Andrew Dadson, Liz Magor, and Neil Campbell. The exhibition shines a light on recent acquisitions as well, such as the large-scale, black-and-white tapestry of Crimes of the Future (2020) by Shannon Bool, and new ceramic sculptures in Monochrome Reveries 2 & 4 (2024) by emerging artist Isabel Wynn.
In the gallery’s forecourt at the entrance to the exhibition, is a site-specific installation titled Mono (Restoration) (2024) by multi-disciplinary artist Khan Lee. In a newly commissioned installation for the show, the artist has sanded back layers and layers of paint, leaving blurry, concentric circles that represent a 41-year exhibition history (over 100 shows) through the colours of the wall. As a former employee of the gallery, Lee has seen the gallery’s walls cycle through a multitude of colours, transforming the entrance space for every exhibition.
Colour is expressed through scent in painter and perfumer Megan Hepburn’s Olfactory White A and Olfactory White B (2024). The work consists of two olfactory white blends comprising 30 idiosyncratic odours. From the accompanying exhibition text, “The smells we encounter in the natural and humanmade world are composed of hundreds of different odour molecules, yet we recognize these mixtures as specific odour objects, such as rose or coffee. Like the colour white—where we can perceive many variations of white light or white paint—or the onslaught of frequencies in white noise, the same is true of olfactory white. It is not a single scent but is produced from at least 30 distinct scents.” Viewers are invited to spray each scent on test strips and smell combinations of unique odours—Moroccan rose, diesel, pear skins, skunk, buttered popcorn, camembert and black spruce in Olfactory White A; cedar wood, freshly cut grass, white pine needles, cat vomit, shoe polish, and tar in Olfactory White B. Curiously, both scents smell rather similar.
Later in the exhibition, visitors encounter Ken Lum’s striking red furniture sculpture, Untitled (red circle) (1986). Here, a circular couch forms a closed barrier rather than an invitation to sit and relax. Elsewhere, visitors are transported to the calming, meditative light installation, Uriel (2023) by preeminent light artist James Turell. Black and White and Everything In Between: A Monochrome Journey demonstrates the artistic possibilities of monochrome and the potential for colour to activate our senses of sight, smell, sound, and touch. (There’s even an audience-sourced playlist of songs inspired by colour to accompany the exhibition.) The exhibit is on now through November 3, 2024. For admission and details, visit vanartgallery.bc.ca.
Gallery hours are:
Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday 10AM-5PM
Thursday, Friday 10AM-8PM
For the summer, until September 3, Tuesday, 12-5PM
Address: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7
Article by: Kristin Lim
Canada Line: Approximately 300-meter walk from Vancouver City Centre Station.
SkyTrain: 7-minute walk from Granville SkyTrain Station.
For more information, please see TransLink’s Trip Planner.