{"id":450422,"date":"2026-05-29T02:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T02:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450422\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T02:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T02:55:11","slug":"hiroshi-sugimoto-5-things-to-see-at-sam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/450422\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiroshi Sugimoto: 5 things to see at SAM"},"content":{"rendered":"

SINGAPORE \u2013 The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is presenting South-east Asia\u2019s first major survey of acclaimed Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, best known for his philosophical photographic experiments.<\/p>\n

The 78-year-old\u2019s show, on till Oct 4, is a dark space structured in the form of a mandala and titled after the Buddhist mantra Form Is Emptiness. Here are five works that still the mind, and query: Does contemporary art always have to to be disruptive and loud?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Brush Impression, Heart Sutra (2023).<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE<\/p>\n

While Sugimoto in general prefers to understate, this 4.5m-high wall of 288 calligraphic characters makes no qualms about its intention to envelop, brought home by the curators\u2019 decision to lay the tiles out along a curved wall.<\/p>\n

The characters are from Buddhist text The Heart Sutra and include the exhibition\u2019s title Se Ji Shi Kong, Form Is Emptiness, six columns from the right.<\/p>\n

Sugimoto wrote all the characters on photographic paper in near darkness with a brush dipped in fixer, an invisible chemical solution. Not able to see what he had written, this was an uncertain process that necessitated great focus and faith in his own calligraphic flow.<\/p>\n

The act can be viewed through the lens of performance art, the time-limited medium which he then immortalised by exposing the paper to light. This toggling between time \u2013 which he achieves here without using the camera \u2013 is signature Sugimoto.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sugimoto\u2019s video work, Accelerated Buddha (1997 to 2017).<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE<\/p>\n

Another work that makes visible the neglected, underlying structures of time. While Accelerated Buddha itself is a five-minute, 45-second video, its basis is a series of photographs Sugimoto made of 1,001 statues of Guanyin in the Rengeo-in temple in Kyoto, Japan.<\/p>\n

This photo series, Sea Of Buddha (1995), has also been included in the inner most sanctum of the mandala at SAM\u2019s exhibition. Sugimoto managed to secure access to these bodhisattvas only after seven years of negotiation, photographing them during a 30-minute interval when the morning sunlight would strike their gold-leaf exteriors just so.<\/p>\n

The video work, true to its name, accelerates the images until close veneration of the deities is no longer possible. It reads like a statement on the meaningless clip of the digital age. Sugimoto also observes that civilisations tend to inevitably accelerate before their demise.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In Praise Of Shadows (1998).<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE<\/p>\n

In the day, Sugimoto\u2019s studio in Tokyo is lit by just a single lightbulb, the only source of artificial light. At night, it becomes the realm of shimmering candles. In Praise Of Shadows is his way of compressing the life of these candles through long exposure photography.<\/p>\n

The photo series is titled after Japanese author Jun\u2019ichiro Tanizaki\u2019s 1933 essay, a love letter to the more diffuse beauty of Japanese architecture and lighting before the irruption of modern fluorescent lighting.<\/p>\n

Each print holds clues of how volatile or steady a flame was, or events in its burning that left a greater overall mark. They are equally abstractions of light harking back to the primordial creation of the world, or the first glimpse of a foetus emerging from its mother\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Theaters (1976 to 2014).<\/p>\n

PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM<\/p>\n

A motif that preoccupied Sugimoto for close to 40 years, Theaters is also a throwback to Sugimoto\u2019s own beginnings: the artist was said to have taken his first photographs in cinemas in high school, British icon Audrey Hepburn inspiring him to train camera on screen.<\/p>\n

In Theaters, however, he transcends the personal. Sugimoto, by leaving the shutter open throughout each screening, abstracts films into a portal of light. He believes it distills the films\u2019 essence: comedies end up brighter, while horrors manifest several shades darker.<\/p>\n

The architecture of these abandoned cinemas and opera houses are opulently vintage, their hollowed out interiors giving them a surreal quality. This need not be spooky, let the rectangles of reflected light cast in front of each print on the ground light your path.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Five Elements (2011 to 2012).<\/p>\n

ST PHOTO: SARAH LEE<\/p>\n

Lest one assumes this show is all two-dimensionality, curators have also included nine pagodas. These are stupas made of optical glass that the artist has built in partial repayment of the debt he owes the camera.<\/p>\n

Their cosmic ambition, with five shapes that symbolise earth, water, fire, air and void, is also a way of honouring the magical ways optical glass can contain all nature and even time.<\/p>\n

Each stack is embedded with a photo from Sugimoto\u2019s Seascapes (1990-2013) series that captures the horizon where sea meets sky. This was a formative moment for the artist that he has described as revealing to him the origin of consciousness itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SINGAPORE \u2013 The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is presenting South-east Asia\u2019s first major survey of acclaimed Japanese artist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-450422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=450422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}