Iris No 143 — 花菖蒲 No 143

Entry one hundred forty-three in Sugiura Kazutoshi's iris series presents the hana-shōbu with a compositional restraint that amplifies its symbolic weight — the iris has long carried associations with the Boys' Festival (Tango no Sekku) and with masculine virtue in Japanese culture, even as Sugiura strips away narrative context to focus purely on the flower's formal presence. The petals appear almost weightless despite the layered density of the printing process, a tension between material accumulation and apparent lightness that defines Sugiura's best work. Held in several major museum collections, pieces from this series consistently attract scholarly attention for their technical innovation.