Going Out

Going Out is the woodcut print that earned Honda Masaya an Excellence Prize at the 2023 Awagami International Miniature Print Exhibition, an international competition requiring all works to be printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) produced by the Awagami Factory in Tokushima. The abstract composition engages with the materiality of the washi substrate itself, a conceptual move that suits the miniature print format, where close viewing rewards attention to surface and texture. Woodcut's inherent graphic qualities — the resistance of the wood grain, the directness of the carved line — lend the image a structural clarity that anchors the abstraction. The title suggests movement or transition, and Honda may use the openness of non-representational form to evoke a threshold state without fixing it to a literal scene. Printed on Awagami washi, the ink sits within the fibrous sheet in ways unavailable to smoother Western papers, giving the work a tactile depth inseparable from its meaning.