Katsutoshi Yuasa

http://www.iamworks.com/~katsu/

I make woodcut works, which are based on my photographs.
http://www.markjasongallery.com/prints/





The scale of the prints and the detailed cutting were reminiscent of GW Bot, but these were something else again. Large scale prints on plywood sheets, hand cut. The image is photocopy transferred from digitally manipulated photography onto the wood. The prints are handpulled with a traditional baren and take half an hour to print each one.




KATSUTOSHI YUASA 12 May – 22 June
CORN EXCHANGE PROGRAMME for 2006

Katsutoshi Yuasa born in Tokyo in 1978 graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2005 with a Masters in printmaking and the RCA prize for publishing. He lives and works in London and has exhibited widely in Tokyo and more recently in New York. Katsu makes large, highly-detailed woodcuts based on photographs which he takes, edits, and then changes to monochrome, before cutting the wood board by hand. Meticulously crafted, his prints are the products of an intense and lengthy process. Yuasa describes this process as an act of ‘purification’, a feature enhanced by his decision to work in monochrome. He sees this transformation of an original image as somehow a means of grasping a higher truth or meaning.

The woodcuts of Katsutoshi Yuasa, in their application, reflect back to his native Japanese tradition of woodcuts, but their photographic content and urban derivation places them in the 21st century.