| schema:description | "Born in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Abe spent his childhood in the village of Shimamaki facing the Sea of Japan. In high school he learned to draw avant-garde pictorial calligraphy and became interested in fine art, which he began to study on his own with ambitions of becoming a painter. In the 1960s he participated in Hokkaido's avant-garde art movement through such groups as Soshiki in Sapporo, later taking a leading role in the movement. From painting he moved on to making objects and reliefs from materials like urethane and metal, then to sculptures and installations using wood. Undergirding this trajectory were his personal exploration of materials and their uses, his bold rejection of conventional art, and his lighthearted propensity for play. In this work he has covered wooden pillars with countless carving marks, coated the surfaces with graphite, and polished them with a scrub brush. Abe says that the challenge of working with hard, heavy wood reminds him of his woodchopping chores as a young boy, and that to make something by tackling nature with all one's might is to live. This austere work may be said to express that primordial relationship between nature and man....(more)" |
