Hiroshi Sugimoto
Architecture
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, IL 60611
Tel: 312.280.2660
Fax: 312.397.4095
www.mcachicago.org
Profoundly beautiful and powerfully evocative, the exhibition
Hiroshi
Sugimoto: Architecture will be on view at the Museum of
Contemporary Art
(MCA), Chicago, from February 22 – June 1, 2003.
Curated by Francesco Bonami, the MCA’s Manilow Senior Curator
and curator
of the 50th Venice Biennale’s International Art Exhibition,
Sugimoto’s
series of breathtaking black-and-white photographs examine iconic
modernist structures including the Eiffel Tower, the Farnsworth House,
Le
Corbusier’s Notre-Dame-du-Haut, and the Guggenheim Bilbao. With poetic
elegance, Sugimoto’s images examine the subtle details and striking
beauty
of these architectural masterworks, while dissolving the lines between
time, memory, and history.
With his Architecture series, Sugimoto has essentially broken all
the
rules of architectural photography. Rather than capturing these great
landmarks of modernist architecture in crisp detail, Sugimoto has
deliberately created out of focus images taken from unusual viewpoints.
Often leaving the lens open for hours, Sugimoto’s blurred forms
evoke the
passage of time, muting any architectural detail, and leaving only the
essence of the building in his final prints. In this way
Sugimoto’s
process is suggestive of the way in which our memories both preserve and
distort images.
The unique installation at the MCA parallels the architectural content
of
the work. Each of the 30 five-by-six-foot photographs is mounted on a
dark
gray monolithic wall (15 in each gallery) with the photographs faced
away
from the entrance so the viewer must experience the entire space before
encountering the actual work.
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture is accompanied by a 166-page
catalogue
featuring full-page illustrations and essays by Francesco Bonami, John
Yau, and Marco Di Michelis. The exhibition will be presented at the
Alyce
de Roulet Williamson Gallery, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena,
California, November 22, 2003 – February 8, 2004.
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, is located at 220 East
Chicago
Avenue. Museum hours are Tuesday 10 am – 8 pm, Wednesday
through Sunday 10
am – 5 pm. For additional information visit www.mcachicago.org or
call 312.280.2660.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Kovler Family Foundation,
Helen and Sam Zell, and Equity Office. Air transportation is provided by
American Airlines, the official airline of the Museum of Contemporary
Art.
Accommodations provided by The Peninsula Chicago. Additional support
for
programming on architecture is provided by the Richard H. Driehaus
Foundation. Media support provided by CS Magazine.
Images courtesy of Sonnabend Gallery, New York. © Hiroshi Sugimoto
2001.