The Sunshine Filtering through Foliage #2

Number two in Yamamoto's series devoted to komorebi — the Japanese term for sunlight filtering through leaves — rendered as a monochrome stone lithograph. The image likely depicts a canopy of foliage with shafts of light breaking through dense leaf cover, an effect Yamamoto translates into pure tonal modulation: deep blacks where foliage clusters, scattered whites where light reaches the page, and the full range of intermediate greys for which his stone work is known. Lithography lends itself to this subject because tusche washes and crayon strokes can register the granular shimmer of light without the hard edges of relief printing. Within his oeuvre, the 'Sunshine Filtering through Foliage' series represents one of the rare outdoor counterparts to the chairs, staircases, and interior architecture of 'Light, Time, Silence,' yet the underlying preoccupation — the slow registration of light on a quiet surface — remains constant across both bodies of work.