"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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