Hiroshi Sugimoto: Conceptual Forms and Mathematical Models

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