Gorilla

Gorilla isolates a single animal subject — rendered in katakana (ゴリラ), the contemporary, zoological register rather than a literary one — and presents it as a study. The gorilla's dense, matted coat, the heavy musculature beneath it, and the deeply marked facial features are all material that suits etching well: hard-ground and drypoint line can describe the directional flow of hair, while aquatint builds the tonal mass of the body and the shadowed planes of the face. The subject sits outside the established repertoire of Japanese printmaking and reflects instead the broader, observational reach of contemporary studio practice, where any subject — zoo animal, household tool, indoor plant — is admissible as long as it can sustain the attention of the plate. Within Sugimoto's wider work, Gorilla belongs alongside other prints in which a single figure or object is brought close and studied without narrative framing. It is also consistent with the post-2020 Tokyo Geidai cohort's willingness to treat etching as a medium for direct, almost matter-of-fact depiction rather than for symbolic or decorative ends.