Work No. 5

The fifth in Hamanishi's numbered Work series, this intaglio print continues the sequence of plates in which the artist allows the visual subject to stand without literary apparatus. Recorded as an etching, the print is executed in the mezzotint manner for which Hamanishi is principally known, with the copper plate first rocked to produce a uniform burr capable of holding ink at maximum density, then burnished selectively to recover the lighter tonal range. By the fifth plate in such a numbered series, an artist has typically established the formal parameters of the group — scale, compositional density, palette of natural subjects — and Work No. 5 can be read against its predecessors for the variations Hamanishi introduces. The mezzotint medium remains rare in contemporary practice owing to its labour intensity; Hamanishi's continued work in it places him among a small number of practitioners worldwide sustaining the technique at exhibition scale.