I went to the Chiba City Museum
of Art to see Hiroshi Sugimoto’s two part exhibition entitled “Past and Present
in Three parts” and “Art and Leisure.”
It was a compact but extraordinarily gorgeous exhibition, which takes in
his works including his three great photographic masterpieces and the “toko-no-shiturae,”
or artistic settings for a tea ceremony room alcove.
As a photographer, Sugimoto’s
works are very conceptual.
Generally speaking, photos reflect a moment, but he endeavors to show history
or the flow of time. One of his
masterpieces “seascape,” consisting of simply sea and sky, was created based on
his idea, “Is it possible for us to see the same scenery that ancient people
saw?”
His “theatre series,” consisting
of the white screen and the inside of a movie theater shows the passage of time
using time-lapse exposure. The
white screens in his photos seem to show nothing but they are the accumulation of
the light of 2-hour-movies. In a
sense, we can see a 2-hour-movie in a moment. For Sugimoto, taking photos doesn’t mean just reflecting the
real world. He shows us the time
we’ve never seen before.
Before he started his career as a
photographer, he was an antique art dealer in NYC. Still now, he is an art collector and with his expert eyes
on Japanese art he carefully chose the combinations of hanging scrolls and
artistic objects for a tea ceremony room alcove. The 27 combinations displayed in the “Art and Leisure”
section are innovative because he matched, for example, an old Japanese hanging
scroll and a portrait bust statue of Christ harmoniously.
Whenever I see his masterpieces,
they remind me of the word “mitate.”
It’s difficult to find an exact word in English, but it might be similar
to “metaphor” or “replacing something in a different image.” Mitate is a very basic way of thinking
in traditional Japanese arts, such as landscape design, noh play and pottery. Sugimoto’s mitate is always beyond my
imagination and that’s why I’m strongly fascinated with his works.
photos: Chiba City Museum of Art
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