The exhibition The Possibility of Existenceshows/showed the forgotten photographic oeuvre of Shigeru Onishi (1928 - 1994). After graduating in topology (branch of mathematics) from Hokkaido University in 1953, the artist began to apply his mathematical theories to photography. Although his theories are fairly complex, they have produced a unique body of work that distanced him from other movements and ideas in Japanese photography of his time.
According to Onishi, the goal of a photographic work is “to know the conditions of the subject’s formation which is founded on a desire to pursue such metamathematic propositions as the ‘the possibility of existence’ and ‘the possibility of arbitrary choice.’” 1
It is believed that he produced photographic works when he was at Hokkaido University until around 1958. https://mem-inc.jp/artists_e/shigeru-onishi/