Trimming

Trimming, like its companion titles in Amano's catalog, takes a specific physical action as its conceptual starting point. To trim is to cut away excess, to reduce a form to its essential boundaries by removing what extends beyond the desired edge. In woodblock printing, trimming applies literally to both the paper and the carved block, where surplus material is cut away to define the printed area.

This woodblock print embodies the reductive logic of its title. Amano's carving process is fundamentally an act of trimming: removing wood to reveal the shapes that will hold ink and transfer to paper. The printed image that results is a record of everything that was not trimmed, a positive trace of the material that survived the subtractive process. By naming the work after the act of removal rather than the act of creation, Amano draws attention to absence as a generative force, where what is cut away matters as much as what remains.