The Run And The Chase

The Run And The Chase implies a composition built around movement and pursuit, in which the relationship between two figures — one fleeing, one following — organises the image. Mokuhanga's reliance on flat areas of pigment and a defined keyblock contour lends itself to figures rendered in profile or near-silhouette, where the suggestion of motion is carried by gesture and the placement of forms within the picture plane rather than by tonal modelling. Water-based pigments printed onto [washi](/glossary/washi) can be layered to produce overlapping fields, useful for indicating distance between pursuer and pursued. The subject also has a long lineage in East Asian printmaking, from narrative [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) scenes to twentieth-century sōsaku-hanga reinterpretations. Ho Ching Wong, based in Hong Kong, exhibited at the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference juried show in Nara, and the work reflects the contemporary use of mokuhanga for psychologically inflected imagery. The print's title, with its repeated definite articles, frames the action as archetypal rather than specific, in keeping with much present-day work in the medium.