water vein

Instead of layering multiple editions on one sheet of paper to make a single work, multiple sheets folded on one thin sheet of Japanese paper are layered on top of each other to form a single image. This is an attempt to disassemble the basic nature and process of “composing a screen by layering multiple plates” of printmaking, and to reconstruct the existence of a “plate” while disassembling it. By layering something folded on thin Japanese paper, it is not a simple overlap of colors, but a mixed color that passes through the fibers of the Japanese paper, and a complex, three-dimensional, and unpredictable expression is created from the color version where white haze becomes the lower layer. In this way, one image born from the “plate” is captured as a single part, and while thinking about how to layer it on the spot, the most comfortable color is instantaneously searched.

　The fact that a landscape changes color and taste depending on all factors such as weather, time, and season is very similar to printmaking, where various expressions can be created from a single mold by changing the color and way the paint is applied. Thin Japanese paper is surprisingly strong, and can pick up wood grain and barren marks on boards. Sometimes the wood grain on a woodblock looks like a stream of water, and the work of following that smooth water vein has an affinity with thinking about water. For this reason, they mainly produce water-based woodblock prints.

Every day, people are being scraped, pushed, and rolled by the flow created by the environment they arrived at by chance, and while being forced to change their outline and location, they are still living today.

When was the last time I started thinking just for myself?

While staring at what is flowing as just flowing, and while unraveling all the social norms we wear,

It is surprisingly difficult to trace the outline of oneself left over from being scraped, pushed, and rolled, and to think only for oneself.

That's why we need a place for ourselves in order for us to exist as individuals, to go back and think individually.

I created this work with the hope that it will be a device that follows the viewer's individual stream of water and returns to individual thought.

Water-based woodblock print, Japanese paper (tengujo-paper)