Please note: the work is framed under Denglas.

“Draken, Göteborg” is part of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Theatres” series, begun in the late 1970s and shot throughout the world, in which the artist positions himself at the rear of a cinema and fixes the shutter at a wide aperture for the duration of the movie. The result is a haunting effect in which the movie screen becomes a glowing blank canvas and the architectural details of the theater, bathed in the screen’s glow, appear in eerie focus. By allowing cinematic run time to dictate his film’s exposure, Sugimoto creates a singular commentary on time, space, and the filmic arts. The present work was taken in a movie theater in Göteborg the same year that the artist received the prestigious Hasselblad Award in that city.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948) is a contemporary photographer known for his highly stylized photographic series exploring the properties of light and time. Born in Japan, Sugimoto initially studied politics and sociology at St. Paul’s University in Tokyo, but in 1970 enrolled at the Art Center College of Art and Design in Los Angeles to study fine art. He subsequently moved to New York. Influenced by Dada and Surrealist techniques and aesthetics, Sugimoto photographed movie and opera houses, natural history dioramas, and wax figures, using long exposures to create eerie scenes with unnatural lighting. Sugimoto is also a practicing architect, and has designed specific spaces to exhibit his photography; his interest in architecture is also evident in his numerous photographs of old buildings. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has had solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (1995); the Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2000); the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA (2000); the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2006); and Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany (2008), among many others. He lives and works in New York, NY.

Selected Public Collections:
Art Institute of Chicago, IL
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan
Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA
St. Louis Art Museum, MO
Tate Gallery, London, England