Fabio Antinori

Artz extends her photographic-portrait practice into mokuhanga in this likeness of a male sitter. The technique requires that the photograph's continuous tone be separated into a small number of carved blocks, each registered by kento marks and printed by hand with a baren onto dampened washi sheets. Water-based pigments, brushed onto the block before each pull, sit in the paper fibres and produce the slightly absorbent, matte surface characteristic of the medium. Bokashi gradients carry the modelling of the face — the shadowed side of the nose, the boundary where hair meets skin, the soft transition from cheek to jaw. The work forms part of Artz's continuing series of named portraits, where the use of the sitter's name rather than an abstracted title is consistent with her longer-term concern with specific bodies in specific spaces.