Play

Play extends Kadota's investigation of folded paper as both subject and printing matrix. The title suggests a looser, more improvisatory handling of the creased sheet — folds that double back on themselves, planes that cantilever rather than resolve into stable polyhedra. Photographed and re-photographed, these forms accumulate the soft tonal gradations that printmakers associate with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), here produced not by wiping pigment across woodblock but by raking light across paper edges. The composition characteristically suppresses scale cues, so a hand-sized maquette can read as architectural. Play belongs to the same body of work that secured Kadota's inclusion in the 2022 PATinKyoto Print Art Triennale, where curators positioned his photographic prints within an expanded definition of printmaking that admits indexical, lens-based transfer alongside intaglio and relief. The piece reflects the dual sculpture training across Musashino and Kyoto City University of Arts: the Tokyo school's emphasis on material specificity and the Kyoto school's attention to spatial composition both surface in the controlled informality of the folded source.