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by Dariusz Kaca
- Image courtesy of
- Artist website (Dariusz Kaca)
Description
This image serves as the artist's profile representation rather than a discrete catalogued edition, standing in for Kaca's broader mokuhanga output. As with his exhibited work, any representative print would draw on the water-based woodblock methods refined in Japan—pigments bound with nori paste, hand-burnished onto dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren) rather than mechanical pressure—while filtering those methods through the compositional sensibilities of Polish graphic arts. Kaca trained within a printmaking culture historically oriented toward intaglio and relief, where tonal modulation, linear precision, and the deliberate exploitation of matrix grain are central concerns. In mokuhanga, those concerns translate into careful registration across multiple blocks, controlled [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations achieved by brushing pigment unevenly across the block face, and an attentiveness to the surface character of the paper itself. His selection for the juried exhibition at the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara situates his practice within the contemporary international cohort extending the medium beyond its Edo-period associations, alongside printmakers from North America, Europe, and Asia working outside the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) lineage.