Contemporary Calgary Announces Dual Solo Exhibitions by Preston Pavlis and Erik Olson
Erik Olson. Shadow, 2025.
Contemporary Calgary Announces Dual Solo Exhibitions by Preston Pavlis and Erik Olson
Two Major Presentations Explore Urban Parks, Memory and Transformation
Calgary, Alta (September 24, 2025) – Contemporary Calgary (701, 11 Street SW) is pleased to present You there by Halifax-based artist, Preston Pavlis and In the Garden by Calgary artist, Erik Olson, on view from September 25, 2025, through February 15, 2026, in the Flanagan Family Gallery. Curated by Kanika Anand, Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary, the two solo exhibitions use the act of walking as a framework for deeper observation, producing moments of pause and imagination that animate the ways we see ourselves and others. This will be the first major institutional exhibition for Pavlis and Olson, underscoring Contemporary Calgary’s commitment to supporting emerging Canadian artists. For media interviews and images, please email nikita@parkerpr.ca
You there, by artist Preston Pavlis invites viewers to consider whether the phrase is a greeting, a call or away of marking someone’s place. The exhibition’s title captures the shifting dynamics at the heart of the artist’s work: seeing and being seen, the tension between self and other and the distance between here and elsewhere. Drawn from walks around Halifax, Pavlis gathers everyday moments — a beech tree in bloom, a discarded mattress, an upturned chair, scattered toys — objects suspended between ease, abandonment, presence and absence. Equally tender are portraits of friends and family in quiet, introspective poses. The exhibition comprises painted canvases juxtaposed with quilted textiles that are made from worn clothing, collapsing the boundary between object and image. One side invites contemplative distance; the other invites touch, intimacy, texture. These works resist a fixed point of view, asking viewers to step back, come close, move around, changing their relationship to each work. Like the act of walking, seeing here is embodied and fluid.
“Connections are plenty across the various paintings and quilts in the show, but I wonder if many are directly legible. Ambiguity of meaning and duality of being are key facets of these works. Their relationship to each other changes with how you move through space. The subjects range from individual trees and objects to portraits of friends and family and larger landscapes. Lightness and humour appear in certain moments. Sadness too. Maybe love also, like the heart shapes on the discarded mattress. Every other connection is up to the viewer to find,” says artist Preston Pavlis.
In the Garden, by artist Erik Olson, began amid the early uncertainty of the pandemic, in Düsseldorf, as an engagement with the historic Hofgarten, but Olson pushes beyond the specificity of place into imagined, liminal spaces. His large-scale oil paintings teem with narrative tension: animals stalk, water reflects and solitary figures linger in thresholds between anxiety and longing. The garden becomes a threshold between order and freedom, between the familiar and the unknown. Colour, scale and perspective are charged: blurring lines between what is seen and what is felt. Olson turns the garden into a communal mind-space, a place of memory, performance, projection — where personal myth meets collective change.
“Starting with the park as inspiration, these paintings evolved into both reveries and nightmares — like dreams between the shadow and the sun,” adds artist Erik Olson.
“The works of Erik Olson and Preston Pavlis offer moments of pause and contemplation that animate and confound the ways we see and imagine. While Olson explores themes of societal transformation and personal reflection through the lens of urban parks, Pavlis’ works explore tender moments of abandonment — of loss, of hope, of joy and of ease. We are thrilled to present almost all new works by both artists who are pushing the boundaries of painting and looking at the medium anew,” says Contemporary Calgary senior curator Kanika Anand.
Artists Erik Olson and Preston Pavlis, David Leinster, CEO of Contemporary Calgary and Kanika Anand, Senior Curator of Contemporary Calgary, will be available for interviews by appointment. Learn more about the exhibitions at www.contemporarycalgary.com.