Seascapes by Hiroshi Sugimoto

Seascapes by Hiroshi Sugimoto are a beautiful abstract monochromatic photograph series exhibited through gelatin silver prints. They are part of an ongoing exhibition called "Rothko/Sugimoto" at Pace London until next  November 17. If you attend the exhibition, you will find eight acrylic paintings by Rothko and eight gelatin silver prints by Sugimoto.

"These artworks reveal two different artistic approaches that arrive at similar conclusions. Rothko's use of medium as pure abstraction communes with the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto who, decades later, used the medium itself to reconsider photography's relationship to his viewers’ perception of the world. In addition to exploring the visual dialogue between Rothko’s dark paintings and Sugimoto’s photographs—both characterized by a binary format of black and grey rectangular elements—the pairings mine the philosophical affinities between the two artists, each offering a meditation on universal and cosmological concerns." See more;

"Sugimoto’s Seascapes (begun in 1980) depict bodies of water from the English Channel to the Bay of Sagami, each photographed in the same stark composition of a horizon line dividing the sky and sea. Divided into two rectangles—one dark, one light—the relationship between sea and sky takes on an almost abstract geometry that carries from image to image and ocean to ocean around the world. Like Rothko, Sugimoto conveys a startling range of emotions within a limited vocabulary of black and white tones and a fixed format. Focusing on water and air—the substances that gave rise to life—the works evoke primordial seas and the origins of human consciousness." - Pace London.

via | minimal exposition