Untitled (Abe-Takano 02)

The second sheet in the Abe-Takano series, this intaglio continues the duo's practice of shared plate authorship. Daisuke Abe (b. 1977, Kyoto) and Takeshi Takano (b. 1980, Kanagawa), both trained in print at Aichi University of the Arts, have built their collaboration around the technical resources of intaglio — etching, drypoint, aquatint, and combinations thereof — rather than the relief and stencil traditions more commonly associated with Japanese printmaking. The medium imposes its own discipline: a copper plate is worked by hand, bitten by acid, and printed under the pressure of the etching press, with each impression slightly different from the next as the burr wears and the plate tone shifts. In the context of a numbered, untitled series, that variability becomes part of the work's content rather than a problem to be solved. Within the duo's wider output, prints of this kind sit alongside their selection for PATinKyoto 2022, where they exhibited under the joint billing 'Abe Daisuke / Takano Takeshi' as part of the contemporary Kyoto-region print scene.