VancouverHOME Magazine Feature
Andre Petterson at Foster/White Gallery - November 2015
Typewriter tornadoes and bicycle orgies — Andre Petterson’s machine portraits with a twist.
Andre Petterson at the Bau-Xi Gallery (VIDEO)
Galleries West Feature
The suit jacket – a symbol of male power and authority – is the topic of Andre Petterson’s latest paintings, showing this fall at the Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver. Interestingly, the work takes as its jumping-off point politically charged graffiti Petterson saw on stately buildings in Buenos Aires earlier this year. The visual contradiction seemed a metaphor for the rift between Argentina’s working class masses and the conservative elite.
“Everything was spray painted,” says Petterson. “And I’m not talking street art, I’m talking vandalism. Just rampant spray cans on marble facades, windows and cars. It was just everywhere. It sort of got to me. The people seemed so unhappy.” Petterson takes a similar approach with his mixed-media paintings, using bold colours, smeared paint, drips, spatters and the like. He photographs the paintings, and then paints atop the print, blurring the boundary between painting and photography.
Andre Petterson - Artist (VIDEO)
A look at the 2014 show at the Bau-Xi with work by Andre Petterson
Piano Works Make Music - The Georgia Straight
...a strong tradition of visual artists making music and sound prevails in Vancouver, one of them being Andre Petterson, whose exhibition, Voice, is on view now at the Bau-Xi Gallery. Petterson, who plays both piano and drums and has performed for years in rock and jazz groups, has created a series of works that express his connection to that aspect of his history. Two visual motifs dominate his show (mostly mixed-media on panel, but also including two sculptures): the piano and sheet music.
Andre Petterson² - Creators Vancouver
Hurray! Andre Petterson is getting ready to mount another show at the Bau-Xi Gallery. Opening night in Vancouver will be on October the 24th. “I’m currently working with images and thoughts of past years and travel experiences,” says Petterson. “Floaters – things that perk away and remain unresolved for awhile, then emerge.”
Andre Petterson Q&A - Creators Vancouver
Andre Petterson is a talented local artist whose recent multi-media work has been rooted in photography. In his upcoming September show, Transition, Petterson ‘explores the contentious symbolism of the suit jacket.’ It is a show inspired by serious, Neoclassical buildings in Buenos Aires that have been overlaid with politically pointed graffiti. Petterson represents this idea of an uprising against the establishment with his Sumi-e type painting on a Westernized suit jacket.
Petterson’s show will run at the Bau-xi between September 10th and the 22nd. In the meantime, Petterson is letting us in on some of his Vancouver favourites.
La Presse Feature (FR)
La Galerie LeRoyer présente en primeur jusqu'au 10 octobre les oeuvres récentes de l'artiste canadien Andre Petterson, réalisées à la suite d'un voyage en Afrique australe qui l'a bouleversé. Et inspiré.
Seattle Times Feature
Gray skies have you feeling lethargic? Here’s an art exhibition to jolt you back into shape — the hyperactive machine portraits of Vancouver, B.C., artist Andre Petterson, now showing at Foster/White in Pioneer Square. Typewriters explode and multiply; bicycles are buried in ribbons; and energetic streams of paint, ink and pencil pulse through space like waves of sound, or bursts of electricity.
Profile - Creators Vancouver
When the rain is unforgiving and the wind raging sideways, the goal is to get to Destination A and back to the car before umbrella and spirit go to pieces. Yet, on this torrential afternoon, I did stop, turn and go back to stare at a painting in the window of the Bau-xi Gallery.
Featured was a clunky black typewriter, much like the Underwoods that clacked into the night in Dad’s den. A muddle of thought blew up from the ribbon while hard-working ink leaked down from the cage.
I brought my sog into the gallery to learn more about the artist: Andre Petterson. Petterson, I came to discover, takes photos of classic iconography – typewriters, dolls, pianos, horses – then feeds them through his painterly imagination. “I pick an item that speaks to me on some level.”
The typewriter takes him back to his Grade 9 typing lessons. It was either typing or gym class. “I’m not a sports person. I’m a drummer, so I thought that would be helpful. I got to about 40 words a minute.” This particular old typewriter he found on a trip to Cypress. It was just sitting outside on the ground, next to a nondescript building. “I picked it up, put it in the middle of the road and started taking pictures.”
