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Indepth Arts News:
"Sugimoto: Portraits"
2000-03-05 until 2000-05-14
Guggenheim Berlin
Berlin, ,
DE Germany
From March 5 until May 14, 2000 the
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin is presenting
Sugimoto: Portraits, a new specially
commissioned exhibition for its gallery on
Unter den Linden. Hiroshi Sugimoto, born
in Tokyo in 1948, occupies an exceptional
position in the world of photography,
combining poetic imagination and noble
elegance with conceptual complexity.
The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto left his
native Japan in 1970 to study art in Los
Angeles at a time when Minimalism and
Conceptual Art - both of which informed
his work - reigned. As his practice evolved,
Sugimoto came to conceive of subjects of
such conceptual depth that they have
merited his attention throughout his rich
career. Inspired by the systemic aspects of
Minimal painting and sculpture, he explores
his themes through a rigorous sense of
seriality. Five significant photographic
series dominate Sugimoto’s career thus far:
Theaters (begun in 1978), Dioramas and
Wax Museums (begun in 1976),
Seascapes (begun in 1980),
Sanjusangendo, Hall of Thirty-Three
Bays (created in 1995), and Architecture
(begun in 1997).
In his new commission created specially for
the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin,
Sugimoto has turned to the wax figures he
first explored in his Dioramas series.
Unlike his earlier depictions of dioramic
displays found in natural history museums
and tableaux of famous persons in wax
museums, these images are life-size,
black-and-white portraits of historical
figures, such as Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and
Voltaire, which are photographed against
dramatically-lit, black backdrops. Working
in a scale entirely new to his oeuvre,
Sugimoto isolated the wax effigies from the
staged vignettes in Madame Tussaud’s
London Waxworks, posed them in
three-quarter length view, and lit them so as
to create haunting Rembrandtesque
portraits. His painterly renditions are lush
with details and recall the various painting
sources – such as Hans Holbein, Anthony
van Dyck, and Jacques Louis David – from
which the wax figures were originally
drawn.
The photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto left his
native Japan in 1970 to study art in Los
Angeles at a time when Minimalism and
Conceptual Art - both of which informed
his work - reigned. As his practice evolved,
Sugimoto came to conceive of subjects of
such conceptual depth that they have
merited his attention throughout his rich
career. Inspired by the systemic aspects of
Minimal painting and sculpture, he explores
his themes through a rigorous sense of
seriality. Five significant photographic
series dominate Sugimoto’s career thus far:
Theaters (begun in 1978), Dioramas and
Wax Museums (begun in 1976),
Seascapes (begun in 1980),
Sanjusangendo, Hall of Thirty-Three
Bays (created in 1995), and Architecture
(begun in 1997).
In his new commission created specially for
the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin,
Sugimoto has turned to the wax figures he
first explored in his Dioramas series.
Unlike his earlier depictions of dioramic
displays found in natural history museums
and tableaux of famous persons in wax
museums, these images are life-size,
black-and-white portraits of historical
figures, such as Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and
Voltaire, which are photographed against
dramatically-lit, black backdrops. Working
in a scale entirely new to his oeuvre,
Sugimoto isolated the wax effigies from the
staged vignettes in Madame Tussaud’s
London Waxworks, posed them in
three-quarter length view, and lit them so as
to create haunting Rembrandtesque
portraits. His painterly renditions are lush
with details and recall the various painting
sources – such as Hans Holbein, Anthony
van Dyck, and Jacques Louis David – from
which the wax figures were originally
drawn.
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