Space&Space Verticals 3

Part of Endo's long-running Space&Space series, Verticals 3 belongs to a subset of works in which the artist isolates upright forms — most often tree trunks photographed in dense forest — and arranges them as repeating vertical bands across the picture plane. The composition typically pairs a photographically derived motif with passages of flat tone or geometric block, exploiting the contrast between the textural specificity of bark and the cool flatness of printed ground. Working at the intersection of mokuhanga, offset lithography and screen processes, Endo applies registration-perfect printing to imagery that originated in a camera, a hybrid technique he pioneered among Japanese printmakers from the early 1980s onward. Verticals 3 demonstrates the artist's signature concern with negative space (the 'ma' between the trunks) and his tendency to use the rectangular sheet as a window onto a sliver of forest rather than a panoramic view. As with much of the Space&Space series, the print engages a quietly contemplative mode of looking that links Endo's contemporary practice back to the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of attending to specific places and natural fragments.