"HIROSHI SUGIMOTO – CONCEPTUAL FORMS AND MATHEMATICAL MODELS" par Klaus OTTMANN. Editions Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern. 2015. Imprimé en Allemagne. Grand in-8 carré, couverture photo. Non paginé (96p). Texte en anglais, avant-propos de Dorothy Kosinski, illustré de 11 vignette in-texte et 37 reproductions photographiques, 24 en noir & blanc et 13 en couleurs, hors texte, par Hiroshi Sugimoto. Ouvrage réalisé dans le cadre de l'exposition éponyme à The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., du 07 Février au 10 Mai 2015.

 

"In the spring of 2002, I paid a call to Professor Toshitake Kohno at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences to see the university's collection of plaster mathematical models, all made in Germany at the end of the nineteenth century and imported to Japan as teaching aids. The beauty of these pure mathematical forms was a wonder to behold, far outshining abstract sculpture. I experienced a déjà vu. Where had I seen them before? Then I remembered: Man Ray's nineteen-thirties series of photographs of mathematical models cast in plaster from similar molds, which I had come across in a vintage photo gallery in Paris. Whereupon I realized the mathematical forms as I perceived them differed from how Man Ray had pictured them. It was a dare - and I accepted the challenge. Come to think of it, I'd previously done numerous "model works", from museum dioramas to was figures of historical personages. The whited-out cinema screens that were condensed models of time, buildings cosmetically blurred to architectural maquettes, the global sea simultaneously mapping a schema of human mental history - the very act of photographing transfigured everything into models. Man Ray sought to transcend the real though Surrealism; I seek to turn reality into models. Thus, via a different angle from Man Ray, I proceeded to photographically remodel the mathematical models…" Hiroshi Sugimoto.

 

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