#85 Considering

The shortest title in this group, "Considering," strips Hayashi's recurring meditative formula to its bare verb. Where other plates in the series specify a subject — Tokuyama Village, Lao-tse — this 2004 etching withholds it, presenting the act of attention itself as the print's content. Tagged abstract, the work likely consists of a loosely centered field of marks: etched and drypoint line against aquatint tone, with the unworked margins of the gampi sheet active as part of the composition. Hayashi pulls all his own impressions, and prints from this period are characteristically small in scale and modest in edition. The translucent gampi support, often combined with chine-collé inserts of contrasting washi, gives the sheet a layered surface in which the printed image and the paper read as a single integrated object. Within the catalogue, #85 sits at the boundary between the 2003 cluster (Lao-tse, Cocoon, Maharoba, Spinning the Wind) and Hayashi's later 2000s plates, representing a thinning of subject in favor of gesture.