Round World

Round World takes a circular or globe-like form as its central motif, a compositional choice that an etching is well suited to handle: the curve of the form can be described by close-spaced parallel lines, cross-hatching, or aquatint passages that turn around the implied volume. The Japanese title 丸い世界 carries connotations both literal (a round object, a sphere) and metaphorical (an enclosed, self-contained world), and Sugimoto's practice typically allows such double readings rather than resolving them. Within the post-2020 Tokyo Geidai cohort, there is a recurring interest in small, contained pictorial spaces — interiors, objects, partial views — that read as private worlds rather than as panoramas. Round World fits this tendency. The mixed-media designation suggests that the etched plate may be combined with hand-applied colour, chine-collé, or surface drawing, an approach that reflects the loosened categorical boundaries between print, painting and drawing in contemporary Japanese practice. The result is closer to a worked image than to an editioned graphic in the strict sense.