ARTIFACTS

Artists have it rough in Tokyo. Finding affordable gallery space—let alone profiting from your work—is nearly impossible. Enter The Artists Web, a simple and affordable way to publicize and sell paintings, digital art, ceramics or other products from the right side of your brain. The website was founded three years ago in the UK by Chris Kirkland, who has now relocated to Tokyo and launched a Japanese version. It takes just 5-10 minutes to sign up, pick a design template and upload your first images. “Most people find the website editor easy to use and addictive,” Kirkland warns, “and tend to spend a few hours tweaking things to their hearts content.” Take advantage of a free two-week trial, and if you enjoy having your own site, sign up for the Starter (¥12,000 per year) or the Value (¥18,000 per year) packages. The site currently helps approximately 750 artists around the world promote some 30,000 works, which are searchable by size, price, keyword and even color scheme. See www.theartistsweb.co.uk (English) or www.theartistsweb.jp (Japanese) for more information. BJM

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751: Parallel Worlds 749: George Raab: Canadian Wilderness Etchings 743: Daido Moriyama 741: Bauhaus Experience, Dessau 739: The Perry & Harris Exhibition 737: The House 735: XXIst Century Man 733: Kaii Higashiyama 731: Three Weeks of Art Celebration 729: Fashion + Art 727: New Horizons: The Collection of the Ishibashi Foundation 725: Yokoyama and Toulouse-Lautrec 723: Goth: Reality of the Departed World 721: Genesis Art Lounge 717: Tatsuya Matsui: Flower Robotics 715: Space for Your Future: Recombining the DNA of Art and Design 713: MoMA Design Store + Gallery White Room Tokyo 711: Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art 709: Daikanyama Installation 2007 707: Nippon to Asobo 705: Marina Kappos at Tokyo Wonder Site 703: African-American Quilts: Women Piecing Memories and Dreams 701: Kids Earth Fund 699: The Mural Art of Kotohira-gu Shrine: Okyo, Jakuchu and Gantai 697: “Ayakashi” and “Odilon Redon” 695: Architects Around Town 693: Chocolate 691: My Civilization: Grayson Perry 689: Henry Darger: A Story of Girls At War—of Paradise Dreamed 687: Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco 685: Marlene Dumas: Broken White 683: The Mind of Leonardo: The Universal Genius at Work 681: Suntory Museum of Art and 21_21 Design Sight 679: Art Fair Tokyo 2007 677: Gregory Colbert: Ashes and Snow 675: The Door into Summer: The Age of Micropop 673: World of Kojima Usui Collection 671: Keeping TABs 669: The National Art Center, Tokyo 667: New Year’s Preview 665: Jason Teraoka: Neighbors 663: The 3rd Fuchu Biennale: On Beauty and Value 661: Bill Viola: Hatsu-Yume (First Dream) 659: Shinro Ohtake Zen-Kei 657: Prism: Contemporary Australian Art 655: The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium Exhibition 653: Luisa Lambri 651: Modern Paradise 649: The Legend of Ultraman 647: Nihonga Painting: Six Provocative Artists 645: Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 643: Art × Communication = Open! 641: YOROYORON: Tabaimo 639: Africa Remix 637: Mashcomix 635: Move On Asia and Hitoshi Nishiyama’s White Out 633: A Passion for Plants 631: Chikaku: Time and Memory in Japan 629: A Sense of You, Created by Me 627: Beautiful Cities in Dreams 626: 77 Million 625: No Border 623: The 9th Annual Taro Okamoto Memorial Award for Contemporary Art 621: Tokyo-Berlin/Berlin-Tokyo 619: Conversation With Art, On Art 617: Olafur Eliasson: Your light shadow 613: Mayumi Terada: New Works 611: Gerhard Richter: New Works 609: Hokusai 607: Stephan Balkenhol: Skulpturen und Reliefs 605: International Triennale of Contemporary Art 2005 603: CWAJ 50 Years of Print Show 601: Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time 599: Shinji Ohmaki: Echoes-Infinity 597: Miwa Yanagi 596: Cubism in Asia: Unbounded Dialogues 595: Canada Tsuga: The Feeling of Wood 594: Laurie Anderson: The Record of the Time 593: Today's artists X: Nishimura Morio/Matsumoto Yoko 592: Masaaki Yamada 591: Follow me! 590: Daido Moriyama: Buenos Aires 589: Mutsuro Sasaki: Flux Structure 588: Shinro Ohtake 587: Masterpieces of the Louvre Museum 586: Tabaimo: Yubibira 585: Yasumasa Morimura: Los Nuevos Caprichos 584: Julian Opie: Films and Paintings 583: Masterpieces of the museum island 582: The Elegance of Silence 581: Tapies 580: The world is a stage: Stories behind pictures 579: Shigejiro Sano At Play in the Esprit of Paris 578: The Body: Hitoshi Abe 577: Tenshin Okakura: The Awakening of Japan 576: Contemporary Spanish Photography: Ten Views 575:Taro Okamoto Memorial Award 574: Takeshi Tamai: Till Moss Grows On 573: Laura Owens 572: Alphonse Mucha: Treasures Of The Mucha Foundation 571: “Welcome, Welcome” Art-Beijing-Contemporary 570: The hidden side of Japanese art 569: Art Scope 2004: Cityscape Into Art—Michiko Shoji + Johannes Wohnseifer 568: Life Actually 567: Traces: Body and Idea in Contemporary Art 566: Mirrorical Returns: Marcel Duchamp and the 20th Century Art 565: Archilab: New Experiments In Architecture, Art and the City, 1950-2005 564: The Second Annual Fuchu Biennale 563: Have We Met? 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: Adventures in Images 529: Modern Means 528: Remaking Modernism in Japan 1900-2000 527: Treasures of a Sacred Mountain: Kukai and Mount Koya 526: Jan Jansen: Master of Shoe Design 525: Yasuo Kuniyoshi: Between Two Worlds 524: Beyond The Border: Seung H-Sang and Yung Ho Chnag 523: Testimony of Life: Ancient Roman Portraits from the Vatican Museums 522: I Love Art 521: "My" Siberia and "My" Earth: The 30 Year Memorial Retrospective Exhibition of Yasuo Kazuki 520: Time of My Life: Art with a Youthful Spirit 519: Joy of Life: Two Photographers from Africa-JD 'Okhai Ojeikere and Malick Sidibé 518: Roppongi Crossing: New Visions in Japanese Art 2004+Kusamatrix 517: Exposition Musee Marmottan Monet 516: Treasures of a Great Zen Temple: Nanzenji 515: Johannes Itten: Ways to Art 514: Meiji Kaigakan (Memorial Picture Gallery) 513: Kaii Higashiyama: One Man's Path 512: Future Cinema: The Cinematic Imaginary after Film 511: Yasujiro Ozu: Japanese Film Master 509/10: End-of-the-year review and 2004 preview 508: Surface tension 507: Jean Nouvel 506: Makoto Aida: My Ken Ten 505: Gaudi: Exploring Form 504: Ino Tadataka and Old Maps of Japan/Fusuma Paintings of Jukoin 503: Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum 502: Happiness: A Survival Guide for Art and Life 501: Today's Man 500: Taro Shinoda: Helicopter 1 Issues 499- Issues 449- Issues 399-

By Andrew Conti

Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time

The Mori Museum holds a major retrospective for the prominent artist

Polar Bear, gelatin-silver print, 119.4x149.2cm, 1976 photos courtesy of Mori Art Museum

Situated somewhere in the back of the hall, Hiroshi Sugimoto’s lens angles the viewer toward the front of an empty theater. As one stares, the details of the ornately art deco or rococo spaces lose significance and all focus goes directly to the lucent, almost spiritually brilliant white screen at the center.

These images, which the artist created by exposing film to the entire length of a movie, are some of the most well known of Sugimoto’s oeuvre yet make up only a small portion of this extensive and impressive exhibition.

Such glowing hollows of light are a recurring theme for an artist who revels in such standard photographic fare as seascapes, sky and studies of light. Yet Sugimoto’s work goes further through his juxtaposition of such basic elements with a conceptually abundant mix of architecture, mathematically constructed forms and museum dioramas of historical events and wildlife.

This comprehensive retrospective, which will travel to the Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. next year, features a staggering 98 photographs, a full-scale noh theater (with accompanying sound installation created by multimedia artist Ryoji Ikeda), and two previously un-exhibited sculptures. Several performances are planned throughout the show.

Mathematical Form Surface, 0004 Onduloid, gelatin silver print, 149.2x119.4 cm. Model by Martin Schilling, Model Collection of Graduate School of Mathematical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 2004

Among the many new photographic works are a dramatic series of black-and-white images of mechanical and plaster objects with titles like Mathematical Form: Surface 0005. Generalized helicoid with constant mean curvature (2004). These paradoxically sensual studies of shadow and form—which are also titled in mathematical formula—generously quote Marcel Duchamp as they illuminate icons of machinery and geometry.

Equally striking in its studious attention to the properties of light is the “Colors of Shadow” series, in which the artist photographed extensive manifestations of shadow along the walls of his Tokyo studio. The familiar imagery of interior corners and window frames is endowed with a subtle spirituality through a tender appeal to nature and meditative absorption in even the slightest alteration in light.

Perhaps the most compelling of the many series on display are those found in the exhibition’s final room. Here modern architectural icons like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, and the former World Trade Center are presented in cloudy, large-format prints as part of a process Sugimoto describes as “erosion-testing architecture for durability.” By blurring the images, the artist aims to reveal the essence of the buildings and their power in the contemporary psyche. Though simple and straightforward in their approach, they offer clues to Sugimoto’s fascination with the sublime and dedication to photography as a tool for visualizing transcendence.

As with much of Sugimoto’s work, these images are profound moments of artistic and philosophical clarity that elucidate time, reality and human achievement with a reverent but questioning voice. His continuous investigation of what can be seen and experienced in the modern world is measured in a methodology that is at once both philosophically profound and eminently comforting.

Mori Art Museum, until January 9. See Roppongi exhibition listings for details.

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