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Koya Abe is a Japanese artist based in New York City. His artwork has encompassed painting, photography, digital work and video. Abe was an early adopter of digital technology for image making and his artwork incorporates both traditional and digital media. His Japanese background, technology, culture, and the history of art are major subjects of his work.

Abe relocated to New York City from Tokyo in the early 1990s. His graduate school studies, which initially focused on photography, correlated with a significant transitional period of technology in art. Digital processes and media were emerging as new options for photography and other art forms. Digital technology became a fundamental aspect of Abe’s artwork and it continues to function as both a method and as a conceptual basis for his art.

Abe has often explored the issues of culture, technology, and the history of art through his artwork. A sequence of individual art projects, each arranged and titled as a specific “Chapter,” form his Digital Art framework. Each Chapter is a discrete examination of one or more core conceptual issues and the related dynamics of culture, technology, and the status of art. Abe had already been exploring and creating digitally constructed art for some time when he completed the first project of the series, Digital Art Chapter One (2000), which examines culture, technology and art conceptually through digitally constructed works. Digitally-based images were, as yet, rarely seen in art galleries and museums. Digitally constructed artwork like Abe’s Digital Art Chapter One reflected an innovation in art making, conceptually and materially, of the period. Abe later refined and expanded his baseline concept of the Digital Art series into a larger conceptual framework, Topology of Art.

Following Digital Art Chapter One, Abe created Seamless (Digital Art Chapter 2) and Digital Art Chapter 1.5. Both projects reflect his philosophical basis in photography. The projects, early digital constructions, consist of photographed “sets,” theme parks, and recreated historical locations with digitally inserted figures. In Seamless and Chapter 1.5, Abe examines the relationship between the concepts of current or past, and between real or fake by mixing “real” or “fake” photographs of people and places. Abe’s fundamental inquiry in these projects has become increasingly relevant with the further inclusion of technology in life and art.

Through his artwork Abe has considered the essential value of art within a culture and the role of art and human status within a material culture. For example, in Display (Digital Art Chapter 3), Abe placed figures from historic portrait paintings into “real” photographic locations—Ikea showroom displays. In Display Abe conceptually examines the relationship of socioeconomic status and art. Exclusivity (exemplified by the prototypical privileged status of the human subjects) and contemporary mass culture intertwine within the dynamic of the history of art and in the context of digital art media.

Abe’s Japanese culture and art history have been sources of artistic conceptual material in many of his works. For example, in his Hara-Kiri project (Digital Art Chapter 4) Abe applied a conceptual act of hara-kiri (ritual suicide) upon masterworks of Western art. Taking a metaphorical katana to the basis of Western art, Abe digitally removed the essential subject matter of the paintings and exposed the substance and significance of that which was digitally excised.

Through his art Abe has confronted the interaction between Japanese art and Western art and the implicit value that is placed upon each in the western-centric canon of art history. In Analogies (Digital Art Chapter 5), Abe digitally applied traditional Japanese tattoos to the human figures of Western masterpiece paintings. Abe states that his act of “tattooing” these works is a proposition that exposes parallel complexities among societies, cultures, and art, but also the social hierarchies within cultural art forms. Works from the Analogies series are held in the collections of the British Museum and the Musée Ingres Bourdelle.

On March 11, 2011 the Tohoku region of Northern Japan was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami that resulted in the deaths of approximately 20,000 people and the utter destruction of numerous cities and towns. The event had a strong personal effect upon Abe, who was born in the area and spend his youth there. The loss of life was unimaginable and places he knew intimately were literally washed away with the tsunami wave. In response, Abe created the Animism project (Digital Art Chapter 6) which deals deeply with the culture, beliefs, and religious nature of Japanese society in the face of an overwhelming act of nature. Abe has said that the Animism project further served to complete his earlier project, Hara-Kiri. Both projects are based upon his concept that 'the essence of existence is only apparent when existence has ceased to be.' Taken together, Hara-Kiri and Animism resolve Abe’s original supposition. The full Animism series, consisting of 26 prints, was acquired by the British Museum.

Abe continues to work within his Topology of Art framework. Topology (Topology of Art Chapter 7) proposes a non-Euclidian version of art history as a companion to the existing academic standards. Aesthetic(s) (Topology of Art Chapter 8) considers an intercultural aesthetic comparison within the Japanese concept of déforme. Duplication/American Original (Topology of Art Chapter 9) examines art and contemporary society as a dialogue between a traditional Japanese art form and American graphic art. It is, in part, an homage to Roy Lichtenstein, but in Duplication, Abe further intermixes the Japanese and American images as a commentary on that distinct cultural interaction. In Vantage Point (Topology of Art Chapter 10) Abe conceptually and materially reexamines the inherent perspective of art and the way that it changes depending upon the viewer’s cultural or social position. Abe exchanged certain elements of European masterworks to create new and diverging narratives within the art itself. But, Abe has also proposed that the process is a digital method of eliminating himself, the artist, from the artwork that he creates.

Koya Abe's artwork has been extensively exhibited domestically in the United States and internationally. His most recent project is entitled Kabuki.

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Selected Exhibitions

CaixaForum Barcelona, Spain, La Imagen Humana: Arte, Identidades y Simbolismo 7.2023–10.2023

CaixaForum Palma, Spain, La Imagen Humana: Arte, Identidades y Simbolismo 11.2022–4.9.2023

CaixaForum Zaragoza, Spain, La Imagen Humana: Arte, Identidades y Simbolismo 6.2022–10.2022

CaixaForum Madrid, Spain, La Imagen Humana: Arte, Identidades y Simbolismo 4.2021–1.2022

The British Museum, London, Japanese Galleries  7.2023–10.2023

Hangaram Art Museum, Seoul Art Centre, South Korea,The Human Image 12.2015–3.2016

Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban, France Ingres et les modernes 2009

Museum of Art Fort Collins, Colorado 2009

Saatchi | Pulse, New York City 2008

Poietis Gallery, New York City, Story Redefined 2007

Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg, Florida, All American: Works by Artists After 1950 2004-05

Houston Center for Photography, Seamless (solo) 2004

CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York, 7th Biennial 2004

Amarillo Museum of Art, Texas, Digital Art Chapter One (solo) 2003

Abrons Art Center | Henry Street Settlement, New York City, Digital Art Chapter One (solo) 2003

Islip Art Museum, New York, Travelers 2003

Hammond Museum, North Salem, New York, Bi-Ceptual 2003

Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Texas, 43rd Annual Invitational Exhibition 2003

Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado, Learning to Love You More (collaborative) 2003

Seattle Art Museum, Washington, Learning to Love You More (collaborative) 2003

Las Vegas Art Museum, Las Vegas, Digital Art Chapter One (solo) 2001

Cynthia Broan Gallery with Andrew Andrew, New York City, The Viewer's Choice 2001

Kiyosato Museum of the Photogaphic Arts, Japan, Portfolio Acquisitions 2001

Monmouth Museum, New Jersey, Metro Show 2000

Palmer Museum, Springfiled, NJ Metro Show 2000

Albright-Knox Art Gallery | Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York, NY Artists 2000

Institute for Art & Photographic Resources, Peekskill, New York, Digital Ascending 2000

Seton Hall University,, Newark, NJ, Rational Perplexity 2000

CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Ground Zero 2000

80 Washington Square Galleries, New York City, 2000

City Without Walls, Newark, NJ, 2000

NOHO Gallery, New York City, Digital Art Chapter One (solo) 2000

QI, New York City, (solo) 2000

P.S. 122 Gallery, New York City, Place and Honor 1999

Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York City, Mechanism of Value 1999

NOHO Gallery, New York City, Cogito Art (solo) 1999

CEPA Gallery, Buffalo, New York, Twenty-five Years of Photography 1999

City Without Walls, Newark, NJ, Metro Show 1999

Artists Space, New York City, Scope 1998

The Finer Side Gallery, Washington DC, Photography (solo) 1998

Stefan Gang Gallery, New York City, 1998

Cantor Film Center, New York City, Virtual Show 1997

SAI Gallery, New York City, Post-Modern Tendency II 1997

Ward-Nasse Gallery, New York City, NAKED: The Natural State of Being 1997

80 Washington Square Galleries East, New York City, (solo) 1996

Public & Institutional Collections

The British Museum: Animism (full series of 26 prints); works from the Analogies series and Digital Art Chapter One

Musée Ingres Bourdelle

Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg

Amarillo Museum of Art

Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, collection & archive of Las Vegas Museum of Art

Longview Museum of Fine Arts

Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Japan

Artists Space, New York City

Selected Publications

La Imagen Humana: Arte, Identidades y Simbolismo, Fundación "la Caixa", Brendan Moore, ISBN 978-84-9900-294-1, Spain, 2021

Io Penso 3: Da Schopenhauer a oggie educational textbook, 2nd Ed., Franco Bertini, Zanichelli, Italy, 2022

Kuniyoshi, Matthi Forrer, Citadelles & Mazenod, France, 2021

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Matthi Forrer, Prestel Verlag, 2020

Theories in Digital Composite Photographs, Yihui Huang, Routledge | Focal Press, 2019

Art News June 2013, Emma Allen, Cabinet of Curiosities

Light & Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, 2nd Ed., Robert Hirsch, Greg Erf, Focal Press, 2012

Exploring Color Photograph: From Film to Pixels, 5th Ed., Robert Hirsch with Greg Erf, Focal Press, 2011

Bijutsu Forum 21, vol. 23, 2011, Nobutaka Takeda, Gazing at Ingres—the Reception of Grande Odalisque by Japanese Artists

Musée Ingres Bulletin, No. 82, April 2010, Jean-Pierre Cuzin, Dimitri Salmon, Florence Viguier-Dutheil, Ingres et les Modernes, Les Bonus

Ingres et les Modernes, Dimitri Salmon, et al, Somogy Éditions d'Art, France, 2008

Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age, Robert Hirsch, Elsevier/Focal Press, 2008

Exploring Color Photography: From the Darkroom to the Digital Studio, 4th Edition, Robert Hirsch, Focal Press, 2005

Education

New York University, Master of Art Degree (NYU/ICP Program), 1996
Studies in photography with the International Center of Photography

University of Pennsylvania, English studies, 1989

Musashi University, Japan, Bachelor of Economics, 1989