below ground-143

The 143rd numbered work in Kugo's ongoing 'below ground' series, this 2025 woodcut at 70 × 53 cm was exhibited at the 68th CWAJ Print Show. The title points to a subterranean subject vocabulary — strata, root systems, buried forms, or interior cavities suggested rather than literally described — that the series has explored across roughly two decades and over 140 iterations. The Abstract classification indicates that any such referents are dissolved into compositional events: layered fields, irregular contours, and tonal passages built from successive impressions from carved blocks. Contemporary Japanese woodcut at this scale typically combines multiple keyblocks with color blocks printed in registration, and Kugo's training in the sosaku-hanga tradition at Tama Art University locates the work within a lineage where the artist designs, carves, and prints each impression personally. The serial framework, common among Nihon Hanga Kyokai members of his generation, treats each print as one variation within a sustained investigation rather than a discrete tableau, with the numbering itself functioning as a record of duration.