Iris No 98 — 花菖蒲 No 98

Entry ninety-eight in Sugiura Kazutoshi's iris series shows the hana-shōbu in a composition where the relationship between figure and ground has been pushed to one of its more abstract extremes — the flower's forms seem almost to dissolve into the surrounding field of gold and pigment, the boundary between iris and space becoming permeable. This dissolution is not a failure of representation but an aesthetic choice: Sugiura was interested in the moment when botanical fact gives way to pure visual sensation, and the high-numbered entries in the series push increasingly toward that threshold.