Takao Tanabe

One of Canada’s most respected artists presents work spanning six decades – from geometric abstraction to West Coast landscapes.

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Takao Tanabe’s work, in his self-titled exhibition at Vancouver’s Equinox Gallery, gives me an uncanny feeling. He instils something strange into the familiar West Coast landscape, so it takes a new shape.

This small but mighty collection, on view until Aug. 28, shows Tanabe’s successive growth as an artist, with examples from his investigations into abstract expressionism in the 1950s, his jewel-toned geometry from the 1960s, and his prairie period through to his West Coast landscapes. It’s a show that demonstrates the artist’s resilience – born in 1926, he’s a survivor of the racist and cruel internment of Japanese peoples in Canada during the Second World War – and his impulse to experiment across multiple styles before landing on his chosen expression.

Tanabe’s oeuvre is held together not by a singular commitment to a certain style or form, but instead by his use of colour, which gathers in large waves in some periods only to dissipate in others. The colour story begins purposefully and gregariously in his geometric ‘Op art’ works, fades into the washed tones of the prairie winters only to enliven again in a suite of coastal works that feature dusk’s neon skies.

This shift feels dramatic, and I had to check the dates, asking myself if Tanabe has moved to a greater use of colour in his contemporary period. The short answer is a soft yes. Crossing the Straight #1, a work from 2021, is illuminated in vibrant orange, and other recent works, like Crossing the Straight 2/19, from 2019, and Islands 3, from 2011, also hold a brighter yellow and white light, although works like Gulf of Georgia 2/86: Sunset, from 1986, also animate the sky with pink.

Yet, from jewel tones to darkness and light, Tanabe’s work is singular in its effective use of abstraction across each of his periods. To be sure, it’s not only a landscape that you see.

I returned again and again to Arctic 7/89: River Valley (1989) – a river runs through blue and blackish-green terrain, a heavy grey sky pushing against it. The topography is familiar as it carries some recognizable tropes of landscape painting, but the dark tones enfold a unique visual pulse, reminding me I’m beholding a place I may never see, a land with a capacity I might never know. This residual puzzlement signals the abstraction within the work, a beautiful juxtaposition where nature is foreboding, disquieting, wondrous and overwhelming.

Viewing Tanabe’s vistas in this summer of climate disaster provides an interesting context. I wonder if his colours have become more luminous as a reflection of heightened environmental crisis. The pinks, oranges and yellows in his more recent works seem to signal a certain urgency, even while they are visually stunning. The skies have surely changed since Tanabe began to paint them, and his ongoing work seems to track this. ■  

Takao Tanabe at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver from July 24 to Aug. 28, 2021.

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Equinox Gallery

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