DAISUKE TAKEYA 
OPENING RECEPTION
SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 2 - 6 PM

The Christopher Cutts Gallery is excited to announce our upcoming program, a two-part presentation of work by Daisuke Takeya.

The first part is a special 4-day presentation surveying three decades of Takeya’s landscape paintings, serving as an engaging contextual prelude to his succeeding exhibition “Waiting for Spring,” which will feature ten new landscapes, continuing the evolution of his signature Kara series.

This initial presentation will span 26 years of Daisuke Takeya’s explorations in the landscape genre. Takeya was trained in figurative painting at the New York Academy of Art and began investigating the relationships between portraiture and landscape painting in the 1990s. After finding representation with the Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto, Takeya's first show with the gallery in 2001 was his "Everybody Loves You" series, diptychs of skylines juxtaposed with portraits. He then developed his distinctive Kara series, largely in reaction to the CCG's abstract painting programme — the Kara paintings feature large abstract colour field skies meeting diminutive yet detailed landscapes at the bottom of the canvas. The canvases are almost entirely abstract impasto skies, with many paintings over 6 ft tall, while the titular landscapes are only an inch or two in height.

Tracing from his 2000 "Everybody Loves You" series to his 2010s Kara paintings, this survey will also include portraits from his 2020s “No Man’s Land” series, featuring anonymous figures in empty landscapes, and paintings from his 2025 landscape exhibition, “RESIDENTS ⊂ PASSENGERS.” 
 

We hope to see you this Saturday, March 21, 2026, from 2 to 6 pm for the opening reception! The artist will be in attendance.