Untitled (Abe-Takano 01)

The opening sheet of the Abe-Takano collaborative series, this untitled intaglio bears the joint signature of the senior-junior duo trained at Aichi University of the Arts. Working in intaglio rather than the woodblock idiom of historical hanga, Daisuke Abe and Takeshi Takano produce plates through shared authorship — typically one artist initiating the etched matrix and the other revising or inking it — so that the resulting image carries decisions made by two hands rather than one. The numbered series structure, in which prints are identified only by sequence, places emphasis on the body of work as a continuum and on the print as a unit within that continuum, a strategy common in postwar Japanese contemporary printmaking. As the first impression in the run, this sheet establishes the visual vocabulary the subsequent prints develop. The intaglio medium permits the duo a register of mark unavailable in relief printing: bitten line, plate tone, and the velvety burr of drypoint. The work was produced in the period leading to the duo's selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale in 2022.