Untitled (Takayama 01)

Part of an untitled series produced in conjunction with Takayama's selection for the 3rd PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale in 2022, this print likely extends his sculptural investigation into surface and the everyday object into two dimensions. The 'Untitled' designation, common in contemporary Japanese print practice since the 1960s, signals a refusal of the descriptive titling conventions of meisho-e or bijin-ga and aligns the work with a post-sōsaku-hanga tendency to treat the print as autonomous object rather than illustrated subject. Compositionally, prints from this body of work typically register the physical operations of cutting and pressing — block grain, baren marks, the residue of hand-pulled impression on washi — as their primary content. Coming from a sculptor trained at Tama Art University in the lineage of postwar Tokyo's direct-material teaching, Takayama treats the matrix block itself as a sculptural surface, and the resulting print as an index of that surface's encounter with paper. The serial numbering rather than individual titling reinforces this reading: each sheet is a discrete record within an ongoing material inquiry.