Current Exhibition | Galerie Buhler Gallery

Drawings | Roger LaFrenière

Opening reception: 6-8 pm, Thursday 16 July 2026

Exhibition run : 17 July – 11 September 2026

Drawing Workshop with Robert Sim 12 August, 11.30 am – 1pm. Free and all are welcome.

Distinctive yet enigmatic, dynamic and simple, Roger LaFrenière’s drawings express a great sensitivity to the formal qualities of the land in Manitoba. In this exhibition, Galerie Buhler Gallery proudly premieres a selection of his drawings made with graphite and charcoal between the late 1970s to early 2000s. Rapidity as well as geometry shape these works and they reveal how a view of landscape contains constant change. In these never-before-seen drawings, we witness LaFrenière chasing the instant between one blink and the next. This exhibition was conceived by Tanya Gadd.

À la fois singuliers et énigmatiques, dynamiques et économiques, les dessins de Roger LaFrenière témoignent d’une profonde sensibilité aux qualités formelles du territoire manitobain. La Galerie Buhler Gallery est fière de présenter en première une sélection de ses dessins réalisés au graphite et au fusain entre la fin des années 1970 et le début des années 2000. La rapidité autant que la géométrie façonnent ces œuvres, qui révèlent combien le paysage est en perpétuelle transformation. Dans ces dessins inédits, nous voyons LaFrenière poursuivre l’instant qui sépare un clignement d’yeux du suivant. Cette exposition a été conçue par Tanya Gadd.

A note from Nicole Aminot, President and CEO of St. Boniface Hospital:

Roger Lafreniere has been a good friend and supporter of SBH and Buhler Gallery. I had the pleasure of meeting Roger a few years ago and have fallen in love with his landscapes. He has truly shown how beautiful Manitoba’s prairie landscapes are. SBH is fortunate to have on display many of Roger’s art on our walls. Thank you to Roger for blessing us with another showing and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I do.

Nicole Aminot CPA, CMA

Présidente et Directrice Générale | President and CEO

Image: (Untitled); Roger LaFrenière.

Poet in Residence with the Spiritual Health team

St. Boniface Hospital’s Spiritual Health department has a special role. The bedrock of their work is being present—a simple but incredibly powerful act. Through listening, reflection, and conversation they offer practical assistance and spiritual guidance. The team works deeply with resilience and vulnerability, those two most human qualities

Capturing this kind of work is difficult, but there is a strong tradition in poetry of articulating spiritual experiences. GBG’s curator, hannah_g, has commissioned the poet, jaz papadopolous, to write a collection of poems in response to spending time with St. Boniface’s Spiritual Health team. jaz has also run poetry writing workshops with the team and some of them may share their poems in a public reading. The collection will be published as a chapbook and launched in November 2026, as part of the What Colour is the Sacred? exhibition. We hope you will attend this event!

Image by Gold Bard.

Beader in Residence, Health Information

St. B.’s Health Information Department is at the heart of the Hospital’s operation. Much of the work done here is unseen and perhaps unthought of but it is fundamental to patient care. The department is paper-based and so the records have a strong visual and material presence, but it is the thought of each file being a dataset that led to the idea of having a beader-in-residence here.

In a beaded item, each bead can act a bit like a data point. Data becomes legible through organising, interpretation, and structuring; for example seeing a group of pixels that form a photo. In the same way, a beaded Octopus Bag contains thousands of beads (data points) that are organised into images that carry cultural information.

David Heinrichs has been commissioned by GBG’s curator, hannah_g, to be the beader-in-residence where he will interpret the formal qualities of the Patient Records (without looking inside the files or in any other way contravening patient privacy and confidentiality). David will examine the aesthetic qualities of data storage, such as the number of files, their colour coding, as well as the way staff relate to them. He will also explore the role the records and their staff play in the ultimate purpose of the hospital—to provide care. By becoming a regular presence in the Patient Records office and running a beading circle, David is building relationships with staff and creating opportunities for sharing knowledge and culture. David will create a site-specific beaded piece that will be completed in March 2027. Keep an eye out for the date of closing reception of this project–you’re invited!