Artnews.org: Nicole Klagsbrun New York

Hiroshi Sugito: "the birdsong"

Within the past years the Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugito has gained international recognition, particularly in the context of the Tokyo-Pop movement. However, his pictorial language diverges significantly from the ‘Super Flat’ aesthetic of his colleagues. Often theTokyo-Pop artists appropriate not only the childlike pictorial motifs of popular culture, such as manga comics or animé films, but also ist style by applying glaring colours, painting flat planes rather than volumes, and creating entirely smooth surfaces. Hiroshi Sugito’s subject matter however does not draw its inspiration solely from the stereotypes of mass culture. The initial impulse of his paintings seems to originate from memory, and his attention is turned inwards. In Sugito’s suggestive and bizarre pictorial inventions visual reality, dream, and childlike fantasies become one. Sugito also stands out in the field of Tokyo-Pop with regards to his painting technique. His atmospheric paintings are characterized by an open brush language and a fascinating enigmatic translucency.

In Sugito’s recent works tiny, stylized and sometimes vaguely discernible objects, such as mountaintops, waves, blossoms, and birds, as well as military airplanes, missiles, or fire, are hovering within vibrating fields of colour, which seem to expand into infinite space. The transparent depth of the luminous spaces is achieved through a sophisticated and time consuming technique of applying numerous layers of acrylic paint and dry pigment. Floating within those painterly horizons, the figurative elements seem uneasily lost in time and space, thus avoiding any obvious narrative or anecdotal meaning. Rather they read as poetic ciphers for memories, thoughts, and sensations. Similar to Magic Realism, Sugito frees the material objects from their conventional meaning and then uses them as open pictorial signs for his fantastic and sometimes disquieting imaginary worlds.

Recurring motifs in Sugito’s paintings are curtains, referring to a predominant metaphor of Western painting. A variation of the window motif can be found in the fragile grids of horizontal and vertical lines, which run across the entire picture plane, resembling blinds. Viewed from a distance they read as geometric abstractions. Sugito intelligently plays with the opposite ompositional concerns of geometric abstraction and figuration, as well as with the tension between surface and spatial illusionism.

Hiroshi Sugito

1970 born in Nagoya, Japan

Lives and works in Nagoya, Japan

Education

1993 Graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Arts

Solo Exhibitions

2006
Arndt & Partner, Zurich

2005
Arndt & Partner, Zurich, Switzerland
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York

2004
Fortes Vilaca, Sao Paolo, Brasil
Arndt & Partner, Berlin
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

2002
Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles

2001
“in the shadow”, Tomio Koyama, Gallery, Tokio
Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Deutschland
Gallery Nicole Klagsbrun, New York, USA

2000
Galleria Gian Ferrari, Mailand, Italien
Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, USA

1999
Arndt & Partner, Berlin, Deutschland
Galleria Camargo Vilaça, Sao Paolo, Brasilien
Kenji Taki Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
London Projects, London, England

1998
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokio, Japan
Marc Foxx, Los Angeles, USA
Nicole Klagsburn, New York, USA

1997
Nicole Klagsburn, New York, USA
Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, USA

1996
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokio, Japan
Marc Foxx, Santa Monica, USA

Group Exhibitions

2007 “Imagination Becomes Reality. Eine Ausstellung zum erweiterten Malereibegriff
Werke aus der Sammlung Goetz”, ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe

2006
Part III. Talking Pictures, Sammlung Goetz München
Imagination Becomes Reality, Sammlung Goetz München

2005
"Works on Paper", Arndt und Partner, Berlin
„Over the Rainbow“, K21, Düsseldorf

2004
"Real World. The Dissolving Space of Experience", Museum of Modern Art, Oxford
"Over the Rainbow", Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
"Time of my life", Tokyo Opera City Museum, Tokyo

2003
„Poetic Justice”, 8. Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul
“Japan: Rising Contemporary Art from Japan”, Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA
„Interview with Painting“, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Piazza S. Marco, Venedig
“Hiroshi Sugito & Antonio Calderaia”, Zink & Gegener, München
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo

2002
„Paintings”, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles
“Inevitable”, Ursula Blickle Stiftung, Kraichtal-Unteröwisheim

2001
“Japan in the Box”, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
"The Big ID", James Cohan Gallery, New York, USA
"Painting the edge of the World", Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA

2000
"Yume no Ato - Was vom Traum blieb...- Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Japan", Haus am Waldsee, Berlin / Kunsthalle Baden-Baden
"Kaleidoscope of Time", Fukui City art museum, Japan
"GENDAI", Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Casle, Warschau, Polen

1999
"Heaven and Hell", Hara Museum, Gunnma Tokyo Station Gallery, Japan
"Noontime Meditation", Prefectual Museum of Fine Arts, Tochigi, Japan
"Modest Radicalism", Mot Annual 1999, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokio, Japan

1998
"VOCA '98",Ueno Royal Museum of Art, Tokio, Japan
"The 21st Gala Benefit Auction", The New Museum Of Contemporary Art, NY, USA
"Hanging", Galeria Vilaca, Sao Paolo/ Paco Imperial, Rio de Janeiro

1997
Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokio, Japan
"Alive & Well, New Painting", Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, USA
"Untitled group show", Marc Foxx, Santa Monica, Ca, USA
"Best of the Season: Selected Work from 1996-97 Gallery Exhibitions",
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut, USA

1996
Nagoya Contemporary Art Fair, Nagoya City Gallery, Nagoya, Japan
"Kind of Blue", Hakuto-sha, Nagoya, Japan

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