Preston Pavlis
You there
September 25, 2025—February 15, 2026
You there—is it a greeting, a call, or a way of marking someone’s place? At once familiar and ambiguous, the phrase reflects the shifting dynamics at the heart of Preston Pavlis’ work: the act of seeing and being seen, the relation between self and other, and the distance between here and elsewhere.
Pavlis’ subjects are drawn from walks in and around the artist’s home in Halifax, where moments of quiet abandonment surface in both the ordinary and the unexpected. A beech tree in summer bloom, a discarded mattress, an upturned chair, or toys arranged on a stump—each holds a trace of something left behind, something at the edge of disappearance. Equally tender are the portraits of friends and family captured in gestures of rest, play, or introspection. Abandonment here is not only loss but also ease, presence, and the poetry of the everyday.
The works themselves reflect a duality—between image and object, distance and intimacy. Painted on one side and quilted on the other, they remain suspended between two modes of attention: the painterly, which invites contemplation from afar, and the tactile, which draws the viewer close. The painted compositions are richly textured, while the quilted side is stitched from worn pieces of clothing, each bearing traces of touch and use. What’s soft becomes structural; what’s discarded is made part of a new whole.
Cloth, like skin, holds memory. It folds, stretches, stains, and carries the marks of the body. Pavlis selects and uses fabric intuitively—drawn to the physical and visual weight of materials and their ability to suggest something else. A bleached piece of denim might resemble a cloudy sky; a worn piece of leather might suggest wood, mud, or skin. Shifting meanings keep the work open—cohesive in form, but resistant to collapse into a singular interpretation.
This layered materiality reflects a practice grounded in attention, care, and reuse. A playful dialogue unfolds between painting and quilting: a beech tree on one side is held by the image of a pair of jeans mid-jump on the other; a discarded mattress finds its echo in a stitched arrangement of pillowcases. These connections are subtle but deliberate, reinforcing the relationship between surface, memory, and the act of looking.
Throughout the exhibition, the viewer is invited to change position—to step back, come close, and look again. These works resist a fixed point of view. They ask us to move with them, to follow the artist’s gaze, and to trace the tension between the intimate and the elusive. Like the act of walking, seeing here is not passive but embodied. Each work holds a moment suspended—an encounter, a trace, a quiet call extended across distance.
Curated by Kanika Anand
Upcoming Programs
Program Archive
About the Artist
Preston Pavlis
Preston Pavlis’ work on canvas and fabric represents his interest in the fusion of painting and textiles as a means to explore narrative, form, and colour. Focused on poetic association and metaphor, the resulting works in oil, embroidery, and collage are personal charts for time and memory. The works situate solitary figures on often non-descript grounds, their gazes shifting between the viewer and somewhere beyond their space. Whether their expressions are pensive, ebullient, or intentional– they possess a palpable interiority. Pavlis’ figures convey a subtle energy and a deep sense of presence that is enhanced by their imposing scale.
Preston Pavlis (b. 1999, Loma Linda, United States) currently lives in Halifax, Canada. Pavlis received his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), MOCA Toronto, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Stride Gallery (Calgary), Bradley Ertaskiran (Montreal), Half Gallery (New York), Guts Gallery (London), the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and Spurs Gallery (Beijing), with a forthcoming solo presentation at Contemporary Calgary (2025). His work is in the permanent collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The Wedge Collection (Toronto), the X Museum (Beijing), and is held in private collections throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.
About the Curator
Kanika Anand (she/her)
Kanika Anand is the Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary, Canada and co-curator of the Indian Ceramics Triennale, India. Her curatorial approach focuses on placemaking and social practices that interrogate structures of power and modes of engagement. Through a lens of interstitial discourse, constructs of time, social space, and traces of mobility remain a keen area of interest and research.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Delhi University and a Master’s degree in Art History from the National Museum Institute, India. She has been curatorial fellow at the Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France (2012-13) and fellow at the Global Cultural Leadership Programme, organised by the Cultural Diplomacy Platform and the European Cultural Foundation (2018). She has worked extensively with galleries and institutions across North America, France and India and has worked on major exhibitions of work by Yoko Ono, Chitra Ganesh, Diane Arbus, Marcel Dzama, Paola Pivi. She has written for art journals like Ocula, Art India, and Art Basel and has contributed to several books on contemporary art.
