Silence

Silence as a visual subject requires the artist to make absence felt as a positive presence. Masaji's woodblock print takes on this challenge through abstract forms that likely emphasize stillness, open areas, and the suppression of visual noise. In the sosaku-hanga tradition, silence also describes the conditions of the artist's studio practice: the solitary work of carving wood and pulling prints by hand, without the conversation and collaboration that characterized shin-hanga workshops. The title may refer equally to the content of the image and to the conditions of its making. Masaji's treatment of silence connects to the Japanese aesthetic concept of ma, the pregnant emptiness between forms that gives shape its meaning. In woodblock printing, ma is literally the uncarved, uninked space that defines the printed areas by surrounding them.