2018
Spotlight
© HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, Duomo, Florence. Courtesy of Galleria Continua (San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana)
In 2018 we were are delighted to present Hiroshi Sugimoto | Gates of Paradise an exhibition of Sugimoto’s work that charts journeys by Japanese missionaries in the 16th Century. This series of imposing large-scale works retrace historical and religious links between Japan and the West shedding new light on cultural exchange.
Gates of Paradise charts the journey of the “Tenshō embassy”; four young Japanese Catholics, who were sent to the courts and palaces of Europe in the late 16th century during the first major cultural, religious and political exchanges between East and West. Sugimoto’s series retraces the embassy’s steps, visiting sites such as the Duomo in Florence, the Pantheon in Rome and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, drawing our attention to the centuries-old process of cultural exchange.
A photographer since the 1970s, Sugimoto’s work deals with history and temporal existence by investigating themes of time, empiricism, and metaphysics. Sugimoto’s work is held in the collections of the Tate Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Metropolitan Museum of New York, among many others.
Born in Tokyo in 1948, Hiroshi Sugimoto moved to the United States in 1970 to study photography. A multi-disciplinary artist, Sugimoto works in photography, sculpture, installation, and architecture. His art bridges Eastern and Western ideologies while examining the nature of time, perception, and the origins of consciousness. His series include Dioramas, Theaters, Seascapes, Architecture, Portraits, Conceptual Forms, and Lightning Fields, among others. His works are in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery in London; Galeria degli Uffizi, Firenze; Deutche Guggenheim,Berlin. He is the recipient of the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography in 2001, the Praemium Imperiale Laureate in 2009, Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2010, Officier de L’ordre des Arte et des Lettres in 2013, and Isamu Noguchi Award in 2014, Person of Cultural Merit in 2017.