border 202501

'border 202501' is the inaugural plate in Oishi's ongoing 'border' series, a large-format horizontal etching measuring 59 × 87 cm executed in 2025. The serial suffix — year followed by sequence number 01 — establishes a working framework in which each subsequent plate continues an investigation of boundary, edge, and the threshold between adjacent fields. The panoramic horizontal format invites a reading of the picture plane as a literal seam, the long axis amplifying lateral division and the meeting of zones. Etching is well suited to this conceptual concern: the rectangular plate mark itself constitutes a border before any mark is bitten, and the medium's range — fine hard-ground line, broader aquatint passages, and graduated plate tone — allows differentiated tonal areas to abut without the hard registration edges of relief printing. Abstract in idiom rather than figurative, the work situates Oishi within the contemporary Japanese intaglio tradition cultivated at Joshibi University of Art and Design and represented in the Nihon Hanga Kyokai. The print was included in the 68th CWAJ Print Show 2025, where it functions as a foundational statement for the wider series.