Iris No 158 — 花菖蒲 No 158

A companion to the hundred fifty-seventh iris that immediately precedes it in the series, Sugiura Kazutoshi's one hundred fifty-eighth hana-shōbu composition explores the same fundamental subject through a marginally different set of formal decisions — perhaps a slightly different orientation of the bloom, a different balance between the flower and its vertical leaf structure, or a subtle variation in the chromatic temperature of the gold-leaf application. These late-series pairs demonstrate Sugiura's ongoing interest in the question of how much a composition can change while remaining, essentially, the same.