Daisuke Abe

Daisuke Abe (born 1977, Kyoto; 阿部 大介) is a Japanese printmaker and Associate Professor at Joshibi University of Art and Design, where he teaches in the Printmaking Course (版画コース) of the Oil Painting specialization and has held his appointment since 2017. He graduated from Kyoto Seika University in printmaking in 2002 and completed his graduate studies at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music in 2004, following a Kyoto-to-Aichi training path through two of Japan's principal print-teaching institutions.

Abe's central practice is what he describes as peeling surfaces away from everyday objects — household items, floors, walls, and tools — and re-presenting these surface fragments as printed thin membranes. Working in a hagashi-zuri (peeling) technique, he applies ink and acrylic medium to objects such as worn tools and industrial parts and lifts their surfaces onto Japanese paper, using the object itself as the printing matrix. His solo exhibitions with AIN SOPH DISPATCH in Nagoya — among them Figure (2019) and Yohaku no Himaku (“Membrane of Margin,” 余白の皮膜, 2023) — extend the same technique across an iconography of forgotten or discarded technical objects.

The conceptual register of his work is what he terms the trace of human use: he has said that his prints make visible the marks of time and action engraved on objects that would otherwise go unnoticed. Worn tools carry these marks, and printing them gives the marks legibility.

Before his Joshibi appointment, Abe held non-tenured teaching and technical positions at Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music and at Nagoya Zokei University (Nagoya University of Art and Design). His work is held in the University Art Museum of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music, the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts (Tokyo's principal print museum), and the Silpakorn University collection in Bangkok, Thailand. He shows regularly with AIN SOPH DISPATCH in Nagoya, one of the principal Aichi-region commercial venues for contemporary Japanese printmakers. His sustained focus on the worn surface of everyday objects, and the elevation of the discarded utility object into a contemplative print subject, gives him a distinctive position within the contemporary Japanese print field.