David Thauberger: Disappearing Architecture

×

Expand

David Thauberger, “Endless Summer,” 2023

acrylic on canvas, 18" x 24" (courtesy of Slate Fine Art Gallery)

Layers upon layers of nostalgia are at play in David Thauberger’s new solo exhibition, Endless Summer, at Slate Fine Art Gallery in Regina. 

Walking into Endless Summer feels like a continuation of the quaint and quirky storefronts that populate the Cathedral neighbourhood in Regina where the Slate gallery resides. Wrapping around the bright open gallery hang 24 new paintings from the iconic Regina artist David Thauberger. Super-flat paintings of ice cream stands, roadside burger joints and grain elevators detail a roadmap of hand-painted signage and mid-century prairie architecture that Thauberger has spent the past 50 years building into mythos. 

×

Expand

David Thauberger, “Swirls,”  2023

acrylic on panel, 18" x 24" (courtesy of Slate Fine Art Gallery)

Having grown up on the prairies, I immediately try to place the familiar buildings. A work entitled Swirls depicts the seasonal ice cream stand I grew up with in Medicine Hat, Alta. Further down the line, I pick out Burger Buoy, the red and white striped burger joint that sits at the edge of Manitou Lake in Saskatchewan. It is just as iconic as the Danceland music hall on the same beach that Thauberger has painted many times in the past (a print and new painting of Danceland are also included in this show). These familiar buildings breed nostalgia for a fast-disappearing architectural landscape as the mom-and-pop independent businesses shutter their doors in favour of ubiquitous Subways and Tim Hortons. 

The bulk of the paintings on display depict false front ice cream and burger shops. I view these paintings as architectural portraits versus landscapes; each subject’s unique quirks described in paint, like personality traits. There is an obvious fondness felt for these buildings that extends to the viewer; this exhibition exudes warmth. Thauberger’s quintessential media and methods are on display with sharp colour, flocking and hidden found material such as mesh. Scratches in the paint, airbrush, and splattering speak to Thauberger’s folky influences. 

×

Expand

David Thauberger, “Dessart Sweets,”  2023

acrylic on panel, 25" x 30" (courtesy of Slate Fine Art Gallery)

These works exist in a suspended timeline of nostalgia, save for the painting titled Dessart Sweets that offers a glimmer of contemporality with a ‘Progress Pride Flag’ (Quasar, 2018) hanging in the window of the candy and ice cream shop that is a well-known and beloved staple of Regina. Thauberger gathers much of his source material on road trips by snapping photos of his subjects with slide film. The resulting works embody the colourful saturation of the media giving them a postcard-like quality. Like nostalgia itself, the works in Endless Summer flatten memory into a hazy warm abstraction. So many of these saccharine buildings are sites of the leisurely escape we seek out on road trips. What is nostalgia if not a safe respite from the chaotic uncertainty of contemporary life?

The title Endless Summer evokes the Beach Boys album Endless Summer (1974). A wave of nostalgia fueled by the film American Graffiti, which featured several Beach Boys songs inspired the release of the collection of hits from the decade previous. An album released to invoke nostalgia for a time quickly fading into the rearview mirror in the wake of the cultural revolution of the late 1960s. I can’t help but feel the same reverberations at play in Thauberger’s Endless Summer. Thauberger has been painting these false-front architectural confections for at least 45 years; what may have started as positioning of place now reads as a cataloguing of a quickly fading phenomenon. As our world feels ever more on the precipice of a mighty fall, Endless Summer privileges the viewer with a vacation from the turmoil for a short time. ■

David Thauberger’s Endless Summer is at Slate Fine Art Gallery, Regina, Nov. 9 to Dec. 2.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.