LAWRENCE PAUL YUXWELUPTUN
INDIAN WORLD
OPENING APRIL 4, 6-9PM
APRIL 5 – MAY 4, 2013

Indian World, My Home and Native Land, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 10′ x 7′ (detail)

Macaulay Fine Art is pleased to present Indian World, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. New abstract and allegorical paintings explore the duality of primitivism in its essence, and Native politics in proximity to colonialism.

Central in the exhibition is “Indian World, My Home and Native Land.” Monumental in scale, Yuxweluptun uses a powerfully energetic palette to depict a melancholy Canadian landscape that speaks to the ongoing dialogue regarding the land rights of First Nations people in Canada. The surreal scene is composed using Coast Salish vernacular, transforming “wilderness” into Native culture.

Yuxweluptun’s abstract paintings, or Ovoidism, possess not only the contemplative ambiguity of colour field painting, but also the detached clarity of vision of hard edge painting. Familiar ideas about modernist painting as purely autonomous are defied, however, by Yuxweluptun’s use of the ‘ovoid’. A central form in Northwest Coast design, the ‘ovoid’ is not free from objective context. These subtle tensions make for a thoughtful and powerful take on the affinities between primitivism and modernism.

Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun lives and works in Vancouver, BC. His work will be on view at the upcoming exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada SAKAHAN: International Indigenous Art. Recent exhibitions include Vancouver Art Gallery (2012) Shore, Forest, and Beyond: Work from the Audain Collection; Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver (2010) Neo-Native Drawings and Other Works: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun; Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Colour Zone, Plug In ICA, Winnipeg (2001) and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun: Born to Live and Die on Your Colonialist Reservation, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (1995). Recent group exhibitions include Challenging Traditions, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario (2009); Transporters: Contemporary Salish Art, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2008); and Beyond Beads and Feathers: Recent Work by Six Contemporary Native American Artists, Portland Art Museum, Oregon (2002).