Iris No 52 — 花菖蒲 No 52

The fifty-second entry in Sugiura Kazutoshi's iris series falls within a productive middle phase of the project, when the fundamental compositional grammar had been established but the exploration was far from exhausted. At No. 52 Sugiura appears particularly interested in the relationship between the iris bloom's deep violet or purple tones and the complementary ochres and golds produced by his gold-leaf application technique — a color relationship with deep roots in Japanese aesthetics, where the pairing of purple and gold signals refinement and courtly elegance.