Space&Space Nature Grass 5

Nature Grass 5 is one of several works in the Space&Space series where Endo concentrates on blades of grass as his primary visual unit. The image typically shows tightly cropped, near-monochrome stands of grass — often photographed close to the ground and reproduced at a one-to-one scale — set against geometric panels of solid colour or a contrasting plate of paving, sky, or water. This juxtaposition of an organic close-up with a flat printed field is the conceptual armature of the entire series, and the grass studies are among its most reductive examples. Endo's technique combines woodblock with offset photo-plates: the grass passages preserve the photographic detail of individual leaves while the surrounding ground is laid down through the even pressure of the baren or press, producing a tonally absolute background. The numbering (5) indicates its place within an iterative investigation rather than a unique image, in keeping with Endo's serial method of printing the same subject through varied colour palettes and proportions across many years.