I Ching II

The second print in the I Ching series continues the engagement with the sixty-four hexagrams of the Book of Changes, in which yin and yang are encoded as broken and unbroken horizontal lines. As a numbered sequel, it likely substitutes a different hexagram or rearranges the same elements to read as a paired counterpart to the first plate, the two establishing a comparative logic across the series. Mokuhanga technique allows the carving of crisp horizontal registers held cleanly against the absorbent surface of washi; the baren-pulled impression preserves the paper's grain alongside the cut block's geometry. Bokashi gradation, if applied, would soften the otherwise flat tonal fields. Qian's wider practice consistently treats numerical and combinatorial systems as visual subjects — his mathematics training at Carleton gives this a pedagogical inflection — and his return to the I Ching anchors a strand of work that links Chinese intellectual heritage to the formal grammar of contemporary abstract printmaking.