Beschreibung:

Hiroshi Sugimoto Elizabeth II 1999 Gelatin silver print. 58 3/4 x 47 in. (149.2 x 119.4 cm) unframed; 71 3/4 x 60 in. (182.2 x 152.4 cm) framed Signed on the artist’s label adhered to the reverse. This work is from an edition of five.
Provenance Sonnabend Gallery, New York Exhibited Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin, March 5-May 14, 2000 and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; June 6-September 10, 2000, Hiroshi Sugimoto Portraits, p. 151(another example exhibited; illustrated); Portland Art Museum, Museum Selections, July 17- October 17, 2001; San Francisco, Fraenkel Gallery, May 3-june 30, 2001 and New York, Guggenheim Museum SoHo, July 26-December 10, 2001, Hiroshi Sugimoto Portraits, (another example exhibited) Literature T. Bashkoff and N. Spector, Hiroshi Sugimoto Portraits, New York, p. 151 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “It is that “mummy complex” that Sugimoto’s new work addresses with uncanny power, playing on the continuities and discontinuities between the centuries-old tradition of the oil portrait, the relatively modern phenomenon of the wax-museum effigy, and the retrograde currency of the photographic still. Indeed, Sugimoto’s life-size apparitions dispute the notion that the “plastic arts” (an old term given new meaning here) have lost their magical function of immortalizing the dead, proposing instead a world of ironically incantatory likenesses whose spell resides in their strange combination of liveliness and morbidity, and in their alchemical ambiguity—in the relay they run between the embalming materials of oil with its viscous sheen, wax with its translucent plasticity, and silver with its metallic gleam.” (C. Armstrong quoted in T. Bashkoff, N. Spector, eds., Sugimoto Portraits, New York, 2000, p. 47) Read More Artist Bio Hiroshi Sugimoto Japanese • 1948 Hiroshi Sugimoto's work examines the concepts of time, space and the metaphysics of human existence through breathtakingly perfect images of theaters, mathematical forms, wax figures and seascapes. His 8 x 10 inch, large-format camera and long exposures give an almost eerie serenity to his images, treating the photograph as an ethereal time capsule and challenging its associations of the 'instant.' In his famed Seascapes, Sugimoto sublimely captures the nature of water and air, sharpening and blurring the elements together into a seamless, formless entity. This reflection of the human condition and its relationship with time follows through his exploration of historical topics and timeless beauty as he uniquely replicates the world around us. View More Works