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a blue and gray lithograph depicting dark turbulent water with foggy mountains in the background and a cloudy sky

Seeing the Land, Feeling the Sea

Curated by

Holly Chang

Seeing the Land, Feeling the Sea presents landscapes by Canadian artist Takao Tanabe from the Art Gallery of Guelph’s permanent collection. The installation chronicles over 20 years of Tanabe’s practice in printmaking, encompassing processes including lithography, photogravure, woodblock printing, and etching.

Evoking a strong sense of place with a simplicity that borders on abstraction, the works are almost topographical. Surveying and illuminating moments layered with mysticism, landscape becomes a living, rhythmic thing. Tanabe’s spaces are not confined to the pictorial frame – there is a dimensionality that places us within a larger encounter. The compelling compositions suggest a solitary point of view – that of a single viewer standing on the edge of the sublime – and that, across these images, there is only land, sea, and you.

Image detail: Takao Tanabe, Marble Island, QCI, (TP 2/4) 1995, lithograph on paper, 46.4 x 89.5. Collection of the Art Gallery of Guelph


Gallery

an artwork depicting a wide flat blue body of water with a few gray land masses in the distance on the left side, under a bright white and blue sky
Takao Tanabe
Gogit Pass (14/50)
an artwork in shades of blue depicting a large flat body of water with islands and land masses in the distance, under a cloudy sky
Takao Tanabe
Inside Passage, Stephen Island (32/50)
an artwork depicting several dark land masses covered with trees around a blue body of water under a gradient sky
Takao Tanabe
Early Evening, Narrow Passage (AP 2/15)
an artwork depicting dark turbulent water with a line of foggy mountains in the background and a dark cloudy sky
Takao Tanabe
Marble Island, QCI (TP 2/4)
an artwork depicting a dark blue body of water with gray land masses extending into the distance, under a gray sky
Takao Tanabe
Narrow Passage (16/25)
an artwork depicting a large dark hill on a shoreline behind a dark flat body of water
Takao Tanabe
Cook Channel, Nootka Sound (47/50)
a black and white artwork of a large flat body of water below a cloudy sky with islands and a shoreline in the background
Takao Tanabe
Skincuttle Channel (48/50)
a sepia artwork with an etching of lands masses on a calm body of water with a cloudy sky
Takao Tanabe
Reflections (33/40)
a black and white artwork showing two hills behind a calm body of water, with a cloudy sky
Takao Tanabe
Inside Passage (46/50)
a landscape painting of a flat green and yellow field with a large gradient blue sky above
Takao Tanabe
Prairie Storm (5/30)
1 / 10


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