Centre A Announces Highly Anticipated New Exhibition by Toronto-based Artist Ed Pien
Exploring Water and the Human Condition
Opening September 16, 2022
Ed Pien, The Hungry Sea, 2018, lithograph, 29 x 22 inches. Courtesy of the artist.
Vancouver, B.C., Canada (September 1, 2022) – Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art is proud to announce Tracing Water, a new solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist, Ed Pien.
The exhibition is curated by Centre A’s Executive Director/Curator Henry Heng Lu and will run from September 16 through November 12, 2022.
Opening Reception:
Friday, September 16, 6 PM – 9 PM
Join us for this celebration! The artist will be in attendance.
Location:
Unit 205, 268 Keefer Street, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, V6A 1X5
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Saturday, 12 PM – 6 PM
About the Exhibition:
Tracing Water presents an extensive assembly of work by Toronto-based artist Ed Pien. Ranging from drawing to lithography to prints and video, the works span over 20 years and explore and incorporate water in these artistic creations.
Two Worlds, for instance, comprises 12 drawings excerpted from a large series of narrative-based drawings. This suite of drawings imagines a future where humans battle watery beings to gain domination and control. The war wages on for centuries, and amidst destruction, suffering and death, hybridized, part water and part humans are born. The epic war finally comes to a halt as the two originating factions can no longer be distinguished.
Recent works by Pien included in the exhibition delve more deeply into exploring the sentience of water, that water has co-agency, liveliness, and creativity. According to Pien, water is a material that is highly process-based and plays a significant role in how a drawing can unfold. These explorations include photographs entitled Breath that capture ephemeral drawings made by the artist’s breath in minus 45 degrees.
Other works, such as Ocean Water Drawing, involve the participation of captured salty ocean water and how it makes and leaves its marks as it intervenes with white ink. The subsequent marks and images made are in direct response to the trace residuals marked up on the surface of the black-coloured papers as ocean water makes its inevitable escape.
Ed Pien is a Canadian artist based in Toronto. He has been making art for nearly 40 years. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, he immigrated to Canada with his family at an early age. Pien divides his time between Toronto and Havana.
Pien has shown extensively, both nationally and internationally, in venues that include the Drawing Center, NYC; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; The Canadian Culture Centre in Paris; The Goethe-Institut in Berlin; The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; The Art Gallery of Ontario; The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Songzhuang Art Centre, Beijing; The National Gallery of Canada. He has participated in the 2000 and 2002 Montreal Biennales; the 18th Edition of the Sydney Biennale; “Oh Canada”, at MASS MoCA. Pien also presented work at the 5th Edition of the Moscow Biennale, and the Beijing International Art Biennale. He has also participated in the Curitiba Biennial, in Brazil and the Bienal Internacional de Asunción, in Paraguay. His project, in the form of photographs, videos and an installation, involving a small group of Cuban Elders exploring the notion of time, is currently being presented at the Art Gallery of Ontario until June 2023.
His work is collected widely and includes FRAC Lorraine, Metz, France; The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; The National Gallery of Canada; The Art Gallery of Ontario; The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; The Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; The Mendel Art Gallery; The Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina; as well as other institutions and private collections.
Centre A would like to acknowledge the support of the David Lam Centre at Simon Fraser University and the Historic Joy Kogawa House for the realization of Tracing Water.
About Centre A
Centre A is situated in Vancouver’s Chinatown, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts. Centre A gratefully acknowledges the support of all of our funders, donors, programming partners, and Centre A members.
Centre A is the only public art gallery in Canada dedicated to contemporary Asian and Asian-diasporic perspectives since 1999. Centre A is committed to providing a platform for engaging diverse communities through public access to the arts, creating mentorship opportunities for emerging artists/arts professionals, and stimulating critical dialogue through provocative exhibitions and innovative public programs that complicate understandings of migrant experiences and diasporic communities. In addition to our exhibition space, we house a reading room with one of the best collections of Asian art books in the country, including the Finlayson Collection of Rare Asian Art Books.
The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at +1 (604) 683-8326 or info@centrea.org.
Demands for government intervention in Air Canada labour talks could negatively affect airline competition in Canada, the CEO of travel company Transat AT Inc. said.
“The extension of such an extraordinary intervention to Air Canada would be an undeniable competitive advantage to the detriment of other Canadian airlines,” Annick Guérard told analysts on an earnings conference call on Thursday.
“The time and urgency is now. It is time to restore healthy competition in Canada,” she added.
Air Canada has asked the federal government to be ready to intervene and request arbitration as early as this weekend to avoid disruptions.
Comments on the potential Air Canada pilot strike or lock out came as Transat reported third-quarter financial results.
Guérard recalled Transat’s labour negotiations with its flight attendants earlier this year, which the company said it handled without asking for government intervention.
The airline’s 2,100 flight attendants voted 99 per cent in favour of a strike mandate and twice rejected tentative deals before approving a new collective agreement in late February.
As the collective agreement for Air Transat pilots ends in June next year, Guérard anticipates similar pressure to increase overall wages as seen in Air Canada’s negotiations, but reckons it will come out “as a win, win, win deal.”
“The pilots are preparing on their side, we are preparing on our side and we’re confident that we’re going to come up with a reasonable deal,” she told analysts when asked about the upcoming negotiations.
The parent company of Air Transat reported it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31. The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
It attributed reduced revenues to lower airline unit revenues, competition, industry-wide overcapacity and economic uncertainty.
Air Transat is also among the airlines facing challenges related to the recall of Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines for inspection and repair.
The recall has so far grounded six aircraft, Guérard said on the call.
“We have agreed to financial compensation for grounded aircraft during the 2023-2024 period,” she said. “Alongside this financial compensation, Pratt & Whitney will provide us with two additional spare engines, which we intend to monetize through a sell and lease back transaction.”
Looking ahead, the CEO said she expects consumer demand to remain somewhat uncertain amid high interest rates.
“We are currently seeing ongoing pricing pressure extending into the winter season,” she added. Air Transat is not planning on adding additional aircraft next year but anticipates stability.
“(2025) for us will be much more stable than 2024 in terms of fleet movements and operation, and this will definitely have a positive effect on cost and customer satisfaction as well,” the CEO told analysts.
“We are more and more moving away from all the disruption that we had to go through early in 2024,” she added.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
