Peter Panyoczki

Peter Panyoczki, the Hungarian-born artist long resident in New Zealand and known for layered, materially complex paintings, gives this print its name within Michael Reed's mokuhanga portrait series. The series records contemporary artists through the carved block, with each face translated into a configuration of keyblock line, registered color planes, and hand-brushed bokashi gradations. The medium imposes its own reading of the sitter: continuous tone is unavailable, so modeling is achieved through ink density on the keyblock and through the controlled overprinting of color blocks pulled in sequence on dampened washi. Reed's participation in the juried international exhibition at the 2021 IMC in Nara, whose theme was sumi, situates this work within a contemporary mokuhanga conversation focused on black ink — its place at the structural center of the print, the range of tone available within a single application, and the relationship between the inked area and the unprinted washi surrounding it.