Tunnelscape

Tunnelscape departs from Yokoo's lithographic mainstay into photogravure etching, a 19th-century intaglio process in which a photographic image is transferred to a copper plate, etched, and printed under press. The medium yields a continuous tonal range closer to a photograph than to a relief or planographic print, and is well suited to the kind of low-contrast, atmospheric subject a tunnel suggests. The image likely takes a road or rail tunnel as its source, photographed and translated through the etching process so that the depth and recession of the tunnel mouth read as a tonal gradient rather than as drawn line. As subject matter, the tunnel rejoins Yokoo's recurring interest in thresholds, passages, and ambiguous boundaries — the lighthouse of 2020, the cross-form of Cross, the tunnel as another structure that marks transition. It is one of the few non-lithographic works in his catalogue and signals his openness, even within a primarily planographic practice, to processes that extend the photographic into the printed image.