Ryuji Tanaka, In Pursuit of the Expanse of Nature

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition, In Pursuit of the Expanse of Nature, by Ryuji Tanaka (1927-2014). The exhibition features a diverse selection of paintings from the 1980s-90s, a lesser-known period of the Japanese artist’s later career in which he continued to produce a remarkable series of works while evolving and refining his techniques. In a letter written in 1993, Tanaka wrote: “A unification with nature—that is my artistic principle. Placing myself at the crossroads between the interwoven kindness and harshness of nature, I express the things I see and hear there through ‘myself’.”

As illustrated, Tanaka knew the ultimate test of the quality of his art depended on his unique way of seeing the world. Tanaka was, first and foremost, a nihon-ga (Japanese-style painting) artist. He deeply understood the techniques, concepts, and nihon-ga traditions. He worked throughout his career to define its borders while redefining its limits. As evident on the canvasses, Tanaka had specific, innovative ways of utilising pigments and incorporating silica, sand, glass powder, adhesives, pebbles, and even metal in his work. He crushed minerals to create pigments and use them like paint, and rather than a brush or even his own body, in some works, he used feathers to make soft, sweeping, powerful gestures to create blurry effects. In search of a spatial expanse of nature, his canvasses evoke a fresh and profound lyricism. Like traditional Japanese Haiku poetry, the artist’s paintings may be described by their spare materiality, but richness in expression.

They are quiet but dynamic. Tanaka came of age as part of the same generation as another pioneering artist, Kazuo Shiraga, who also graduated from the Kyoto Municipal School of Painting in 1948. Tanaka was among those seeking to revolutionise nihon-ga and participated in establishing a group called Pan-real, consisting largely of fellow students. Nihon-ga arose in the late 19th century amid a sense of crisis over the growing influence of

Western art, while building on Japanese traditions, it is nevertheless, a relatively new genre. Over time, it gradually became more focused on traditional forms, materials, and themes. Even after World War II, the nihon-ga group remained oblivious, narrowly interpreting the same traditions and growing increasingly hermetic and ossified. Pan-real started with a policy of openness in terms of style and theme, but soon there were schisms, and it stagnated over time. Tanaka saw this coming early on and was quick to leave the group.

Building upon the foundations early in his career, the 1960s were a productive and influential period in Tanaka’s life. He began to hold solo exhibitions, win prizes for his work, and submit his paintings to various group exhibitions. His close friendship with Shiraga led to his regular visits to the Gutai Pinacotheca. Tanaka joined the Gutai Art Association in 1965 departed the group after two years. His work fundamentally differed from the Gutai members in terms of what he sought to paint. Tanaka wanted to realise in contemporary painting the same fundamentals of spatial expression that have always characterised East Asian art. In the early 1960s, Tanaka began to produce a substantive space on a two-dimensional surface without using perspective—or Illusionism—like in Western painting and developed it in increasingly abstract works.

Tanaka aimed to depict vast expanse of nature itself on a flat surface. Within nature, there are mountains, rivers, trees, and vegetation, but more than discrete objects, they are all part of a natural space integrated with the sky and the atmosphere. What he practiced is described in Japanese as shizen ni narau, learning from nature. In his writings from around the same period as the paintings in the exhibition, he addressed duality and concepts such as “consciousness and unconsciousness. Necessity and supply. The gentleness and harshness of nature.”

Like many artists of his time, he worked as a teacher, but he was also passionate about films, antiques, his students’ work, and he was passionate about haiku. Throughout his career, and in particular during the 1980s and 90s, Tanaka’spaintings are lyrical representations of haiku—in which spareness, brevity, simplicity, depth, control, poetry, philosophy, and measured power lay at its core. Even in their simplicity, they are deceptively deep, controlled, poetic, and beautifully powerful.

Considering Tanaka’s work, it’s important to keep in mind the Japanese Buddhist concepts of the five elements—earth (chi), water (sui), fire (ka), wind (fu), and void (ku). The elements are a way to look at the natural world to more profoundly understand humankind’s connection (and respect) for it. Void is often symbolised as the sky, the space of stillness and silence, yet immense power. According to Boris Vervoordt, “There are wonderful analogies to be drawn with Tanaka’s work, and I’m certain that he understood this because I feel the energy of matter becoming chi in his work.”

Axel Vervoordt Gallery is working on a new, forthcoming publication, Tanaka II, which will be released during the exhibition. The book features essays by Reiko Tomii and Shigeo Chiba and offers essential scholarship necessary to deepen the art world’s knowledge of this truly original artist and his later practice.