Hiroshi
Sugimoto

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo in 1948 and studied photography in the United States during the 1970s. A multidisciplinary artist, he works with photography, sculpture, installations and architecture. His art forges a link between Eastern and Western ideologies while simultaneously examining the nature of time, perception, and the origins of consciousness. He has produced numerous photographic series, the best known of which include Dioramas, Theatres, Seascapes, Architecture, Portraits, Conceptual Forms and Lightning fields.In the early 2000s, he began creating spatial installations and started collaborating with the traditional performing arts : the Noh performance of Yashima daiji at the Bregenz Kunsthaus in Austria and the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 2001, Modern Noh – The Hawk Princess at the Japan Society of New York in 2005, and Sanbaso – Kami hisomi iki, first in Yokohama in 2011 and then at the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013. In 2011, in collaboration with Osaka’s National Bunraku Company he created Sugimoto Bunraku sonezaki Shinju, at Yokohama’s KAAT Theatre, and became the first artist to revisit a traditional Bunraku play. That Bunraku was restaged on a tour of Europe in 2013 (Rome, Madrid, and Paris). His most recent Noh play, Rikyu-Enoura, was staged in 2017 for the Japan Society of New York. His work has been performed in theatres, museums, and art galleries in Japan (the Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Sakura Hall, Setagaya Public Theatre, the Mori Art Museum and Tokyo’s Museum of Photography, the MOA, the Go-Oh Shrine in Naoshima, and the Toshima Performing Arts Centre etc) and abroad (the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Victoria Theatre in London and the Guggenheim, the DIA Art Center and the Japan Society in New York.

In the early 2000s, he began creating spatial installations and started collaborating with the traditional performing arts : the Noh performance of Yashima daiji at the Bregenz Kunsthaus in Austria and the Dia Center for the Arts in New York in 2001, Modern Noh – The Hawk Princess at the Japan Society of New York in 2005, and Sanbaso – Kami hisomi iki, first in Yokohama in 2011 and then at the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013. In 2011, in collaboration with Osaka’s National Bunraku Company he created Sugimoto Bunraku sonezaki Shinju, at Yokohama’s KAAT Theatre, and became the first artist to revisit a traditional Bunraku play. That Bunraku was restaged on a tour of Europe in 2013 (Rome, Madrid, and Paris). His most recent Noh play, Rikyu-Enoura, was staged in 2017 for the Japan Society of New York. His work has been performed in theatres, museums, and art galleries in Japan (the Kanagawa Arts Theatre, Sakura Hall, Setagaya Public Theatre, the Mori Art Museum and Tokyo’s Museum of Photography, the MOA, the Go-Oh Shrine in Naoshima, and the Toshima Performing Arts Centre etc) and abroad (the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, the Victoria Theatre in London and the Guggenheim, the DIA Art Center and the Japan Society in New York.

He has since expanded his field of activity to include literature and architecture. After establishing his own architectural firm, the New Material Research Laboratory in 2008, he founded the Odawara Art Foundation and was responsible for the architecture and landscaping of the buildings which were inaugurated in September 2017. Hirosho Sugimoto has receive numerous prizes including the Mainichi Art Prize (1988), the Hasselblad Prize for photography (2001), the 21st Praemium Imperiale of Japan (2009) and Japan’s Purple Ribbon Medal (2010). He is also an Officier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2013), and a Bunkakorosha—a Person of Cultural Merit in Japan (2017).