“SCAN DO SCAN” is a three-person exhibition by Tenei Abe, Hiroshi Kakizaki, and Ryusuke Ito. All of the artists live in Hokkaido, and the intention of this exhibition, which marks the first in a series of subsequent exhibitions, is to promote contemporary art in Hokkaido.

Tenei Abe was born in 1939. Since the late 1960s, he has produced unconventional sculptures using new materials such as rubber, aluminum, and semi-rigid urethane, and from the 1980s he turned to wood sculpture, producing works that defy any single framework, ranging from human figures and heart-shaped pieces to indigenous abstract structures. This exhibition will feature Abe’s largest stand-alone work to date, titled Funade (Departure). Abe has worked freely with a variety of materials up until now, but in this latest work he has used pulp, the raw material for paper, for the first time. This marks the start of a new “Departure” for Abe, including his encounter with this material, which gives birth to the unique texture on the surface of his works.

Hiroshi Kakizaki was born in 1946. In the 1960s, he painted surrealistic depictions of individual lives resisting the stagnation of the times in oil. In the 1970s, around the time of his transition to three-dimensional modeling, he became more interested in nature and moved toward the reduction of its entirety. The “From the Edge of a Forest” series of works on view in this exhibition began in the 1990s, starting with multi-layered panel-like works, followed by floor-standing sculptures, and then, since 1997, wall installations, showing various developments while changing colors and forms. What is consistent throughout these works is Kakizaki’s unique gaze directed at nature, and his feelings about the breath of life and the majesty of the chain of life are condensed into them.

Ryusuke Ito was born in 1963. Since 1989, he had been living in Chicago and trying his hand at the avant-garde of dramatic film in the United States. He began exhibiting his works in Japan around 1996 as a filmmaker, presenting experimental works focusing on the materiality of film, as well as installations contrasting mechanically and awkwardly moving miniature models with realistic video images of the models. The exhibition features three works related to the principles and inventions of cinema: Eiga no Hakken (Discovery of Cinema), 2046-nen Goro (Around 2046), and Ressha no Touchaku (Arrival of a Train). Ito attempts to relive the thoughts of engineers in the early days of cinema by attempting to make a projector in these three different situation settings.

In the “SCAN DO SCAN” exhibition, we would like to draw your attention to the “scanned” images of these three artists, who are active not only in Japan but also abroad with their unique expressions, at the MIYANOMORI ART MUSEUM, SAPPORO.