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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

Takao Tanabe
Gogit Pass (14/50)
Takao Tanabe
Inside Passage, Stephen Island (32/50)
Takao Tanabe
Early Evening, Narrow Passage (AP 2/15)
Takao Tanabe
Marble Island, QCI (TP 2/4)
Takao Tanabe
Narrow Passage (16/25)
Takao Tanabe
Cook Channel, Nootka Sound (47/50)
Takao Tanabe
Skincuttle Channel (48/50)
Takao Tanabe
Reflections (33/40)
Takao Tanabe
Inside Passage (46/50)
Takao Tanabe
Prairie Storm (5/30)
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