Foresight: Empire State Building, US

Part of the 2017 Foresight series, this work shows the Empire State Building drawn on a gessoed canvas, the white ground giving the graphite a chalky, fresco-like surface unusual within Motoda's predominantly paper-based output. The 1931 skyscraper, viewed in three-quarter profile, is depicted with its setbacks, mast, and limestone facade intact but enveloped by an emptied, encroaching cityscape — broken windows, sagging cables, vegetation pushing through Fifth Avenue. The gesso layer allows for an absorbent, slightly granular line that differs from the crisp black of his lithographs, and the canvas support shifts the work toward the conventions of painting while preserving the draftsman's discipline. As with the rest of the Foresight series, the image is neither apocalyptic nor moralizing; the building is simply imagined some decades after its constituency has departed, and the artist's task is to record what would remain.