In his work, Hiroshi Sugimoto has always revealed the pervasiveness of the mystical and the signs which elude habit. He accomplishes this through an abstraction of shapes, a repetition of patterns and an exploitation of established codes, from his flickering candle flames, his seascapes shot around the world, and his portraits of 20th century moral leaders bathed in the light of 16th century Flemish painters—at least, portraits of their wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s. The centerpiece of the exhibition at Fraenkel is the result of an accident and of his aesthetic and spiritual interpretation, since both are intrinsically linked for Sugimoto. He calls these “Acts of God.” In a recent work published by Xavier Barral, the Japanese photographer asks: “What kind of experience might looking at a statue of Buddha represent today?”Accelerated Buddha is a colossal book which reveals Sugimoto the writer.
He splits his time between New York and Paris, taking inspiration from each culture, and he suggests one view his representation of The Last Supper in light of Christian mythology. (The group portrait was originally part of the series Sugimoto shot at Madame Tussaud’s.)
In this depiction of The Last Supper, which measures over five meters, what looks like wax on the apostles faces is in fact water damage from Hurricane Sandy, which flooded Sugimoto’s basement in November 2012. Oddly, the damage created a similar effect as the ones time has wrought on Leonardo da Vinci’s original painting. And Sugimoto thanks neither God nor luck for that. “Leonardo completed his Last Supper over five hundred years ago, and it has deteriorated beautifully. I can only be grateful to the storm for putting my work through a half-millennium’s worth of stresses in so short a time,” he says.
http://fraenkelgallery.com/exhibitions/acts-of-god
http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com
http://exb.fr/en/117-hiroshi-sugimoto-accelerated-buddha.html
