Rhys Edwards: Autophagia

Rhys Edwards — Autophagia opens at Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver on July 29, 2026 and runs through September 5, 2026; the gallery lists an opening reception for July 29, 6:00–8:00 PM.

The show places contemporary oil still lifes in conversation with Dutch Golden Age floral painting and the language of machine‑made images. WAAP frames the project around the idea of “autophagy” from AI research — models trained on the images they themselves produce — arguing the work exposes a growing feedback loop in image culture. The gallery describes Edwards’s paintings as combining flowers and objects painted from life with found photographs, museum images, fragments of AI‑generated paintings and imagined elements to reveal the “slippage between observation, mediation, and invention.” (WAAP)

“slippage between observation, mediation, and invention.” — WAAP

What this looks like on the wall are oil paintings that deliberately blur provenance: some passages read like traditional still life, others collapse into digital-looking patterns or collage‑adjacent fragments. That mix will be familiar to anyone interested in how sampling and algorithmic tools reconfigure authorship in music; Autophagia asks a visual equivalent of the same question: when your source material circulates back into itself, what survives as original?

Autophagia is Edwards’s first solo exhibition with Wil Aballe Art Projects, according to the gallery listing. For biographical context, Edwards is an artist, curator and writer based in the Vancouver/Surrey area; his CV and previous projects are detailed on his site, which notes exhibitions at Addition Agency (2023) and Empty Gallery (2020) and writing in publications such as The Capilano Review and Canadian Art. (WAAP) (Rhys Edwards)

The show has been picked up in online arts coverage since the opening; for a quick preview and further context see a staff post on Booooooom and additional writeups that reprint the gallery's synopsis. (Booooooom)

Practical details and inquiries are listed by the gallery: Wil Aballe Art Projects, 1375 Railspur Alley, Vancouver, BC; contact wil@waapart.com or +1 (778) 229 3458. (WAAP)