Matsuo Bashō

Satori Soractis

Satori Soractis. Following Basho’s Roads
an artist’s book by Maria Korporal

Recent exhibitions:
• June 30 – July 17, 2022: First Book Night, BBK Kunstforum Düsseldorf.
• April 1-24, 2022: Positions of artistic book and text production, Galerie VBK Berlin.

Inspired by Matsuo Basho’s “The Narrow Road to the Deep North”, the artist made several meditative walks on Monte Soratte, during which she made numerous drawings that follow the lines and structures of the rocks and stones. These drawings became the basis for the etchings in this artist’s book.

Black silk-covered cardboard box (hardcover) made by hand in Japanese style with letterpress-title on front panel, grey silk and white paper on the inside of the box, 14,5 x 39,5 x 2,5 cms., containing artist’s book entirely printed on Japanese paper, cover made of slik mounted on paper and carrying the title printed above a sumi-e design, four pages with the quoted haiku texts were printed with nylon cliches, two copper plates used to produce each of the eight color etchings, i.e. aquatint and sugar-aquatint.

Artist’s Book in an edition of 40 copies. The cliche of the title, the frontispiece and the colophon were made by Korporal on copper plates. Each copper plate was printed by incorporating two colors mixed by the artist. The final prints are thus composed of 4 different basic colors. The binding was effectuated by using an antique Japanese method called Kangxi.

Sant’Oreste, 1990