PΗΟΤΟ:Hiroshi Sugimoto-Past Presence

Since the mid-seventies, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work has drawn on both Minimalism and Conceptual art and his numerous bodies of photographic work have covered a diverse range of subjects, from Dioramas, Theaters, Seascapes, Portraits, and Architecture. Sugimoto‘s artistic activity has also reached beyond photography to encompass sculpture, architecture, writing, and performing arts.

By Dimitris Lempesis

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s masterful photographs exemplify both the craftsman’s will to visual beauty and  perfection, and an incisive exploration of philosophical notions of space and time, imagination and reality, science and history.  Drawing on the classical photographic tradition, Sugimoto creates distilled, meditative images which unite the concrete and abstract, and contain meaningful conceptual underpinnings which seek to materialize the ‘invisible realm of the mind’ and the unconscious. The solo exhibition “Past Presence” explores the artist’s continued interest in time and history though a canon of 20^th Century masterworks which comprise this new series, shown here for the first time.   From Brancusi, Picasso and Matisse, through Magritte, Duchamp, Mondrian, to Giacometti, Warhol and Johns, each picture depicts an object that appears to float in an idealized, opaque space, representing an archetypal form once nascent in the artist’s mind.   As in his earlier “Architecture” series, Sugimoto’s images appear out of focus and slightly indistinct, historically familiar, yet challenging the viewer through the blurred renderings to call upon our visual memory, to identify and ascertain each object and what it signifies within our modernity. Evoking questions of how images are remembered, Sugimoto asks us to conjure the original conception and essence of an artwork, removed from its associations.  Are images recalled in precise recollection or as some intangible essence through time. “Past Presence” began initially through an invitation from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, when Sugimoto was invited in 2013 to participate in a photographic commission for the forthcoming anniversary of The Aldrich Sculpture Garden.  While photographing outdoors, he encountered a Giacometti sculpture, which became the inspiration for this new body of work.  From there he decided to move out of the garden, turning the lens of the camera indoors, photographing a selection of works in the museum’s interior galleries.

Info: Marian Goodman Gallery, 24 West 57th Street, New York, Duration: 10/9-26/10/19, Days & Hours: Mon-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.mariangoodman.com