Hanzi He



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Work

Bread Etching Project
2025-2026


Bread has been a recurring material in this practice — chosen for its organic, unstable nature. Pressed into soft-ground zinc plates, it leaves behind traces of its own transformation: the texture of its surface, the evidence of drying, shrinking, and change over time. These works explore what etching can preserve when the material itself is temporary.





First contact
2025
Etching, bread
38 × 28cm





Residue
2025-2026
Etching, bread
76 × 28cm

Six slices of bread were pressed onto soft-ground zinc plates at descending stages of dryness — the first lifted while fresh, the last only after completely drying out. The six prints are displayed together on a single sheet. The impression does not shift in a straight line from clear to abstract; instead it moves erratically.





Proof
2025
Photopolymer
21 × 15cm







3 Days
2026
Etching, bread
30 × 42cm

Fresh bread, pressed into soft-ground and left alone for three days, slowly dried and contracted, transforming the work into something more than process. The soft-ground recorded the bread's shrinking: what happens when interference stops and time is allowed to do its work. Rest, here, actually creates form.