TrépanierBaer is pleased to present Vikky Alexander: World Light, an exhibition of new and recent works.  World Light marks the release of Alexander's Castello series, that will be shown along with works from her acclaimed Versailles series, including drawings and the sculpture titled Ideal City, 2008.

World Light is the title of a 1937 novel by the Icelandic writer, Halldor Laxness. The narrative is the story of a man who believes that one day he will be a great poet. Over the years he lives a life of poverty, loneliness, love affairs and scandal, but he never achieves greatness. His dream of utopia is unrealized. Alexander’s vision distorts the utopian constructions of royalty and privilege, simultaneously inventing her own.

The Castello series was made while Alexander was an invited artist at Civitella Ranieri, an International Residency program in Umbria, Italy. The residency is housed in a 14th century castle, on a hill, overlooking the landscape around the small town of Umbertide. In the extensive castle library, Alexander found a book of black and white photographs, taken in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s of the various castles in the Umbertide area. She simplified the images, focusing on the buildings, sky and surrounding landscape, using local Italian magazines as source material, with surprising and fantastic results.

In her Les Jardins de Versailles series, Alexander uses engravings from 1720 of the fountains at Versailles, the folly garden designed by André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV, as a template. She previously worked with the formal gardens of Vaux le Vicomte, also designed by Le Nôtre, in a projection piece Vaux le Vicomte Panorama, 1998 which was exhibited at TrépanierBaer in 1999 and the National Gallery of Canada in 2000, and subsequently in her 2019 survey at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The resulting prints incorporate colour and black and white in a landscape where abstraction and realism collide. 

Forthcoming Artist Talk and Tour in December.