Ser Serpas

Across painting, sculpture, installation, photography, and poetry, Ser Serpas engages with the transient and residual. Performance is central to her wide-ranging practice, with her works manifesting the energy of their creation in unstable and improvised forms. Her paintings, in particular, both depict and are formed by physical distress, their surfaces characterized by a sense of generative deterioration and a deteriorating generation.
 
At the Contemporary Art Gallery, Serpas exhibits a suite of new large-scale paintings: sets of mirroring images made by imprinting or “kissing” one canvas to another while still wet. In contrast to the fleshy portraits in painterly fields for which she is known, these paintings feature a more greyscale palette, dissolving their figures into voids of stained canvas. Flirting in the exhibition’s title with “rent boys” or sex workers, Serpas contends here with the movement of bodies within the narrowing spaces – both public and private – of the contemporary city. 

### Biography
Ser Serpas (b. 1995, Boyle Heights, California) lives and works in New York City and received degrees from Columbia University, New York, and HEAD, Genève. Notable institutional solo exhibitions include presentations at the Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; the Pinault Collection, Bourse de Commerce, Paris; and Swiss Institute, New York. Serpas has also participated in group exhibitions at the Rubell Museum, Miami; Aïshti Foundation, Beirut; MoMA PS1, New York; the 2024 Whitney Biennial, New York; the 2024 El Museo del Barrio Triennial, New York; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Genève; Bonner Kunstverein, Germany; Haus am Waldsee, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Rome; Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Punta della Dogana, Venice; and Kunsthalle Fribourg, Switzerland. Serpas has a solo exhibition upcoming at Kölnischer Kunstverein, Germany.

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rent

Douglas Watt

Known for his meticulously rendered sculptures of social architectures — from bars and bookstores to clinics and changerooms — Douglas Watt’s work takes up the complex relationship between public space and the construction of self. Building on legacies of appropriation, assemblage and the readymade, Watt’s practice draws on quotidian materials and forms, producing model, set and prop-like works that engage questions about the performance of everyday life.

In *Mayor of the Village*, Watt brings together a series of new and recent works that find their point of departure in Vancouver’s Davie Village, a historically significant centre of queer life in the city. Loosely staging the gallery as a café, Watt hangs within this environment a “survey” of his miniaturized model works from the past several years. Referencing tropes of the café art display, the resulting show-within-a-show at once evinces the ways that community is imagined and constructed in the public sphere — aesthetically, politically and otherwise — while nodding to the inevitable failures, fragilities and exclusions of these same structures.

### Biography
Douglas Watt (b. 1990, St. Catharines) is an artist living and working in Vancouver's Davie Village on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. He holds a BA (Art History) from Carleton University, Ottawa; an MFA from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; and was a visiting student in Criticism & Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, Toronto. He has presented solo exhibitions at Unit 17, Vancouver (2019), Tara Downs, New York (2021), and Pumice Raft, Toronto (2024). His work has been featured in *Artforum* and *BlackFlash Magazine*. Watt co-edits the publication *Porthole* with Hamish Hardie.

### Acknowledgements
*Douglas Watt: Mayor of the Village* is generously supported by the Deux Mille Foundation.

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Mayor of the Village

Rafik Greiss

In Rafik Greiss’ work, we encounter a state between wakefulness and dreaming. Driven by the artist’s itinerant drifting within and across disparate urban landscapes, Greiss’ photographs, installations and videos reflect deeply on the complexities of movement and time, pursuing an impression of simultaneous distance and proximity.
 
In *Public Image*, Greiss presents a pair of photographic projects across CAG’s public sites. On the gallery’s façade is an arrangement of images from *By the Highway*, a series made in collaboration with Ser Serpas, depicting her creation of impromptu, temporary sculptures. At Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Greiss has installed photographs of glass vitrines taken in the Agricultural Museum in Giza. Responding to the function of the display case to make its contents visible yet physically inaccessible, these deliberately ambiguous photographs double the station’s windows, taking glass itself – as opposed to what it reveals and encloses – as their subject. 

### Biography
Rafik Greiss (b. 1997) is an Egyptian artist based in Paris working across photography, installation and time-based media. His practice reflects on transformation, memory and the shifting states of images and objects through a formally and technically diverse approach that moves between digital and analogue processes. Often described as atmospheric, provocative and sensual, his work is driven by what Mitchell Anderson calls a “commitment to sensation rather than theme or medium.” His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Balice Hertling, Paris (2024, 2021), as well as in group exhibitions at the Istanbul Biennial (2025); Simian, Copenhagen (2025); Kunsthalle Zürich (2024); and the Swiss Institute, New York, with Ser Serpas (2023). His work is held in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pinault Collection, Paris; Louis Vuitton Collection, Paris; and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris.

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Public Image

We’re working on our [upcoming exhibitions](/exhibitions-and-events/upcoming), opening on April 17. [Visit our archive](/exhibitions-and-events/archive/all) to see past exhibitions and events.

Closed for installation

Join CAG’s Curator Godfre Leung for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

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with Godfre Leung

Curatorial Tour

Christian Vistan

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In May, we welcome Christian Vistan to speak on the work of Ser Serpas.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biography
Christian Vistan is an artist from Morong, Bataan, Philippines living on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Territories, colonially known as Vancouver, British Columbia. Their practice gathers materials and motifs from personal, familial and migrant histories; and assembles hybrid and poetic forms and compositions that intersect, misidentify and relate affect, language and experience. They work across painting, poetry and collaboration, often collaborating with other artists, writers, curators, and their relatives. Recent projects include *Canzone*, a collaborative exhibition with Tiziana La Melia at Unit 17 in Vancouver in 2026; and *Wawa Walk (2013/2025)*, a photographic installation that was part of *Patience*, a five month long rotating exhibition curated by Danica Pinteric at joys in Tkaronto in 2025. They hold a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and were a 2024–2025 Fellow at 221A in Vancouver.

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Christian Vistan on Ser Serpas

Saturday Session

Join CAG’s Assistant Curator Aretha Pereira for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.


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with Aretha Pereira

Connor Crable

[RSVP](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cag-in-conversation-douglas-watt-connor-crable-tickets-1987149233851 "button")

Please join us for a talk at the gallery between Douglas Watt and Connor Crable on the occasion of Watt's exhibition *Mayor of the Village*.

### RSVP
Registration for this event is required. Secure your place [here](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cag-in-conversation-douglas-watt-connor-crable-tickets-1987149233851).

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### Biographies
Douglas Watt (b. 1990, St. Catharines) is an artist living and working in Vancouver's Davie Village on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. He holds a BA (Art History) from Carleton University, Ottawa; an MFA from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; and was a visiting student in Criticism & Curatorial Practice at OCAD University, Toronto. He has presented solo exhibitions at Unit 17, Vancouver (2019), Tara Downs, New York (2021), and Pumice Raft, Toronto (2024). His work has been featured in *Artforum* and *BlackFlash Magazine*. Watt co-edits the publication *Porthole* with Hamish Hardie.

Connor Crable is an art historian and former artist currently completing his PhD in art history and theory at the University of British Columbia. Crable holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MSc with Distinction in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism from the University of Edinburgh.

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Douglas Watt & Connor Crable

In Conversation

Join CAG’s Executive Director Matthew Hyland for a walkthrough of the current exhibitions.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

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with Matthew Hyland

Hazel Meyer

Cait McKinney

One Saturday each month, CAG invites a guest host to lead walkthroughs of our current exhibitions, offering their insights and response to the works on view. In June, we welcome Cait McKinney and Hazel Meyer to speak on the work of Douglas Watt.

### Accessibility
ASL interpretation is available on request. Requests can be accommodated up to 5 days in advance. Please contact [learning@cagvancouver.org](mailto:learning@cagvancouver.org) to book or for more information.

### RSVP
No advance registration required.

### Biographies
Hazel Meyer’s work with installation, performance, and text investigates the relationships between sexuality, feminism, and material culture.
 
Cait McKinney is a media historian who researches queer and feminist social movements.
 
Hazel and Cait have been collaborating since 2014 to explore their shared attachments to queer histories through research, writing, video, and archival interventions. Together they take up experimental methods for enlivening archives related to sexuality and LGBTQ history.  Recent exhibitions, screenings and performances of their work have taken place at: Mitchell Art Gallery (Edmonton, CA), ARQUIVES (Toronto, CA), A Tale of A Tub (Rotterdam, NL), Western Front (Vancouver, CA), Eastern Edge Gallery (St. John’s, CA), Glasgow International Art Biennial (Glasgow, SCT), Kurzfilm Festival (Hamburg, DE), Porn Film Festival (Berlin, DE), 62nd  BFI Film Festival, London, UK), and The International Festival of Films on Art (Le FIFA) (Montréal, CA).

Exhibitions

Talks & Events