"Ensoman" by Joachim Schlor

Joachim Schlor
"Ensoman"

Location: München
Technique: intaglio, etching
Social Media: @zettelhexer
Print Number: 1819

The print shows a meditating hermit seated on a deserted shore, facing the sea and an Enso circle that hovers before him like a silent threshold (a variation of a motive I used in the past here as well). Created by laser engraving on zinc plate and then etched, the image combines stark solitude with a precise, almost ritual stillness. A hidden UV-reactive feature reveals an additional layer that remains invisible in ordinary light, turning the print itself into an act of discovery. The work stages solitude not as absence, but as a tool of perception. The hermit sits at the edge of land and water, where fixed form meets movement, and the Enso becomes more than a symbol. It acts like a lens for inward seeing. It suggests that deeper insight does not arrive by force, but by quiet alignment (something that is missing these days almost everywhere). The secret UV element strengthens that idea. What matters most is not immediately visible; it appears only under another kind of light. In that sense, the print behaves like meditation itself. The surface seems simple, but beneath it waits a second image, like a thought that only emerges once the mind has become still.

Seen in the following exhibitions: