Hiroshi Sugimoto: Black Box

From 23 June to 25 September 2016, Fundación MAPFRE is presenting an
exhibition in its Madrid exhibition space in Paseo Recoletos 23 on the Japanese
artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, offering a survey of his work through his best-known
series.
The exhibition is divided into five sections devoted to the artist’s major series:
Theaters (1976-present); Lightning Fields (2006-present); Dioramas (1976-2012); Portraits (1994-1999); and Seascapes (1980-present). On display are a total of 41 large-format works that offer a survey of the artist’s last forty years of artistic activity while also looking forward to future creations, given that some of these series are still ongoing.
Born in Tokyo in 1948, Hiroshi Sugimoto moved to the USA in 1970 to study photography. A multi-disciplinary artist, he works in sculpture, architecture, installation and photography and in the latter field is considered one of the most important creative figures working today. Sugimoto’s work is represented in international collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Smithsonian in Washington, and the National Gallery and Tate Modern in London.

A notably intellectual artist, Sugimoto’s work contains a highly meditated conceptual element that encourages the spectator towards philosophical reflection and which the artist has used to reinterpret some of the principal genres in the classic tradition of photography. Sugimoto is also a master craftsman and has rejected digital technology in favour of traditional methods.
Finally, these images are characterised by great visual beauty and notable technical virtuosity, emphasised by his habitual use of large formats. Taken as a whole, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work constitutes a profound meditation on the nature of perception, illusion, representation, life and death. With this exhibition, Fundación MAPFRE is once again presenting the work of a great master of photography as part of an ongoing exhibition programme that has been presented at its galleries since 2009.