VANCOUVER, BC — August 24, 2026 / ELL Comms / Jennifer Kostuik Gallery announces Against the Grain, a duo exhibition opening September 17 and running through October 11, 2026, featuring gallery artists Katja Zubkova and Marianne Lovink. Two women, two continents, and one shared material — wood — come together in an exhibition that reveals just how differently the same medium can be approached.

 

Zubkova, born in Russia and now based in Vancouver, treats wood like a code to be cracked. A former member of Canada's High-Performance Biathlon team, she turned to art in 2019, and her carved wood wall sculptures — some finished in bold, saturated colour — carry titles written entirely in binary, encoding her own life story into each piece. Lovink, by contrast, brings four decades of practice shaped by her Dutch design heritage and a career built across Toronto, Philadelphia, and now Chicago. Her meticulously carved wall sculptures and framed paper collages explore repetition, pattern, and organic form, informed by a lifelong fascination with Modernism and mark-making across cultures.

 

Placed side by side, the two artists' work becomes more than a shared exhibition — it becomes a conversation between backgrounds, generations, and approaches to a single material.

 

“Against the Grain is exactly the kind of show I love building — two artists who couldn't have more different starting points, brought together around one material. Katja and Marianne aren't just exhibiting together, they're in conversation, and that's what makes this pairing so compelling,” says Jennifer Kostuik, owner and director of Kostuik Gallery.

 

For each artist, that dialogue plays out in their own words.

“I am drawn to materials that already have a language of their own. Wood has movement, grain, imperfection, warmth. It has a history that existed long before I shaped it, and I want the material to remain present in my work,” says Zubkova.

Lovink describes a similar reverence for craft and material: “I believe that the most successful artworks always incorporate some aspect of craft. In my mind the two are inextricably linked. The natural world in all its aspects is and always has been a major source of inspiration for me in life and art.”

Located on the cusp of Yaletown in Vancouver, BC, Kostuik Gallery is celebrating 25 years representing mid-career and established visual artists from Vancouver, across Canada, the USA, Europe, Mexico and Argentina, including internationally recognized photographer Michael Kenna alongside local award-winning photographer David Burdeny and established artist James Lahey. The gallery features paintings (abstract and representational), mixed media collage , all photography forms and a selection of indoor and outdoor abstract sculpture.

 

Kostuik Gallery has participated in international art fairs in Miami, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Palm Springs, Toronto, and Montreal. Services include special commission-based art, art renderings by scale, framing, local delivery and installation, and shipping worldwide.