21 wade ave, unit 2, toronto
Tuan vU | LATE SUMMER | 12 SEPTEMBER – 17 October 2026
Coined by the French collector and critic Philippe Burty in 1872, the term ‘Japonisme’ refers to the influence of Japanese art and design on Western artists during the latter half of the 19th century. Woodblock prints (ukiyo-e), in particular, influenced several European visual artists, including the French painter Pierre Bonnard, who also adopted the format of the kakemono—long, vertical, scroll-like panels—in key works from the 1890s. In the four-panel Women in the Garden (1890–91), Bonnard depicts female figures against elaborate natural backgrounds, with the lack of depth within the picture plane and the vibrant patterns of the women’s clothing drawing from elements of woodblock printing.
Vietnam-born, Montreal-based painter Tuan Vu cites Bonnard, as well as Paul Gauguin and VanGogh, as influences on his own paintings.(“Bonnard’s paintings always give me a ‘Wow!’ feeling,” he says. “I’m never bored looking at them.”) Like Bonnard, Vu takes a bold approach to combining colour, pattern and form, with his compositions and subject matter filtered through memories and imagination. Also like Bonnard, Vu pursued a career outside the arts before becoming a painter. (Bonnard studied law; Vu was a telecommunications engineer.) Vu took painting lessons when he was young—otherwise, he is self-taught—and was told he had a facility for it. However, he never considered art-making a viable career path. As he got older, Vu started asking himself what he really wanted to do with his life. “I began painting again during the pandemic, to fill the time,” he says. “I realized that there are infinite worlds to discover through painting. I was learning something new every day and also felt that I was developing a different part of myself.”
An equally important influence on Vu’s paintings is the women who raised him—his mother and six sisters. Perhaps in homage to the stability his mother and sisters provided during his childhood, the female figures in his paintings are tranquil oases within the tumultuous natural settings in which they reside. Often engaged in leisurely pursuits, such as playing musical instruments, collecting flowers or dreamily lounging under umbrellas, they remain unperturbed even as turbulent skies swirl overhead or potentially threatening animals venture into their space. One could interpret them as Dao Mau figures, the mother goddesses who govern animal and plant life, soil, water and the skies in Vietnamese folklore. Occasionally, however, the women represent something more. Although Vu says his personal views rarely inform his work, the painting Nam, Trung, Bac (meaning South, Centre, North) was inspired by a recent trip to Vietnam, with the figures representing the country’s three cultural regions and the reflections in the water representing the regions’ geographical shapes.
Vu believes that paintings have a ‘consciousness’ and that, on some level, they express to the artist, throughout the act of their creation, what they require compositionally. He also believes paintings convey the artist’s mood at the time of their production, which is why he only paints when he is in a positive state of mind.” For me, art isn’t so much a means of escaping the madness of the world,” he says. “I want my paintings to convey a message about why beauty matters, how it elevates the soul, and gives us hope.”
—Bill Clarke
Tuan Vu is a Vietnamese-born, Québec-based artist whose painting, drawing, and photography explore memory, identity, and the emotional resonance of landscape. A self-taught artist, Vu creates luminous, dreamlike compositions in which female figures, lush tropical vegetation, and water recur as symbolic motifs, reflecting childhood memories of Vietnam while navigating themes of displacement, spirituality, and belonging. Built through layered applications of pigment, his richly textured paintings balance exuberant colour with moments of fragility, embracing intuition and chance as integral to the creative process.
Vu’s work has been presented at major international art fairs. His work has been featured in Financial Times, Vogue Italia, and La Presse, and is held in public and private collections, including Bunker Artspace Museum, West Palm Beach; Holbar Collection, United Kingdom;Fidelity Investments; Boston and Vietnam Art Center. A recipient of multiple Canada Council for the Arts grants, Vu is represented by galleries in Montréal, Toronto, London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, and West Palm Beach.
Bill Clarke is a writer, curator and collector based in Toronto. Since 2005, his writing has appeared regularly in several national and international publications, including Border Crossings,Canadian Art, Modern Painters, ARTnews and ArtReview.