Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of nineteenth-century mathematical models begin in looking rather than documentation; his working method has been described, fairly, as that of a painter. Taking as his subject models held at the University of Tokyo — objects of the same kind Man Ray had photographed decades earlier — he made stark black-and-white images, printed larger than life, in which plaster surfaces of ruled curves and planes start to read as monumental Greek sculpture or as architecture. The frame is art-historical and specific: Marcel Duchamp’s preoccupation with the mechanics of space and with the mathematical foundations of his own work.

What sets this 2015 Hatje Cantz volume apart is its second term. It is the first publication to compare and contrast Sugimoto’s mathematical photographs with mathematical models he fabricated himself, cut from aluminium and stainless steel on computer-controlled precision milling machines. Set together, camera image and machined object describe a circuit rather than a lineage: the model as sculptural body, the photograph as the instrument by which that body is re-measured and enlarged. Sugimoto contributes an introduction; the texts are by Klaus Ottmann.

The book runs to 96 pages and 48 photographs, hardcover, 234 by 254 mm, in English. It appeared with the exhibition at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 7 February to 10 May 2015.

For a collection formed around Sugimoto’s long series, this is a compact and closely focused instance: one family of forms examined from two directions, photographic and machined, with the artist’s own fabricated models placed beside his photographs. The concern is form itself — curve, plane, surface, volume — measured first by the mathematician’s model and then again by the camera. Under a hundred pages, the volume makes its argument by concentration rather than by survey, and that is precisely where its weight lies for a serious shelf.

The meticulous photographic practice of Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (*1948 in Tokyo) is like that of a painter’s. Inspired both by Marcel Duchamp’s obsession with the mechanics of space and the mathematical foundations of his works and Man Ray’s photographs of nineteenth-century mathematical models, Sugimoto photographed similar models at the University of Tokyo, creating starkly beautiful images, printed larger than life to invoke monumental Greek sculpture or architecture. This is the first publication to compare and contrast Sugimoto’s mathematical photographs with his own aluminum or stainless-steel mathematical models crafted with computer-controlled, precision milling machines.
 

Exhibition: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., February 7–May 10, 2015
 

Designed by: white.room productions, New York
Einführung von: Hiroshi Sugimoto
Texts by: Klaus Ottmann
English
January 2015, 96 Pages , 48 Photos
hardcover
234mm x 254mm
ISBN:978-3-7757-3921-4

Publisher page editorial text:
| Mathematical models – seen from the point of view of the great master of black-and-white photography
The meticulous photographic practice of Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto (*1948 in Tokyo) is like that of a painter’s. Inspired both by Marcel Duchamp’s obsession with the mechanics of space and the mathematical foundations of his works and Man Ray’s photographs of nineteenth-century mathematical models, Sugimoto photographed similar models at the University of Tokyo, creating starkly beautiful images, printed larger than life to invoke monumental Greek sculpture or architecture. This is the first publication to compare and contrast Sugimoto’s mathematical photographs with his own aluminum or stainless-steel mathematical models crafted with computer-controlled, precision milling machines.
 
Exhibition: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., February 7–May 10, 2015

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