SHADOWS OF THE PAST
Acclaimed Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto explores the nature of time and perception in his largest-ever solo exhibition at the Chateau de Versailles, conjuring up the ghosts that once haunted the palace.
Artist Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photography exhibit at the Versailles connects the present to the past via the works of Madame Tussaud
Working in photography, sculpture, installation, performing art and architecture, multidisciplinary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto is enamoured with the past. A collector of historical artefacts, he had worked as a Japanese antiques dealer when he first moved to New York, has a love for mediaeval Japanese design and ancient building materials, and believes that humanity since the beginning of time has a shared universal consciousness.
Now for the Château de Versaille’s annual contemporary art exhibition, he introduces his photographs of Madame Tussaud’s naturalistic, historical wax museum figures that have inspired him for the past 25 years to the hallowed halls of the Sun King’s palace – the ultimate symbol of France’s glorious history – in his solo show entitled Surface of Revolution.
Running until 17 February 2019, the show marks the first time a photographer has been invited to exhibit there. Looking as if his subjects actually posed for him, his lifesized black-and-white portraits of Princess Diana, Elizabeth II, Louis XIV, Charles I, the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, Fidel Castro, Salvador Dali, Emperor Hirohito, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte and Voltaire allow the present to breathe new life into the past.
Throughout his 40-year career, his use of a massive 8 x 10 large-format camera and ultra-long exposures have earned him the status of a photographer of the highest technical proficiency, and he is reputed for the conceptual and philosophical, almost meditative, facets of his work. His photographic series including Theatres, Seascapes, Architecture, Portraits, Conceptual Forms and Lightning Fields demonstrate how the medium can both obscure and modify reality.
Writing, producing and directing plays, Sugimoto also works on lighting, set and costume design. In 2008, he established his architectural agency New Material Research Laboratory, working on shrines, tea houses, art galleries, museums, offices and his very own Enoura Observatory art and cultural facility, which opened in 2017 to house the Odawara Art Foundation he had founded eight years earlier. Conferred the 21st Praemium Imperiale in 2009 and the French title of Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters in 2013, he was recognised as a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government in 2017.
What do you like about working in different artistic mediums?
After years of exhibiting my photographs in hard-to-use gallery spaces created by “star” architects, I decided to become an architect myself in order to make threedimensional spaces of the kind that served the artist. From there, my interest then turned to performance – which adds the element of time, the fourth dimension, to space – and I became a theatrical producer. Far from heading toward harmony, as one might reasonably expect, my artistic career seems to be heading into disorder! For this exhibition at the Château de Versailles, I decided to integrate all my activities in a coherent manner. I’m presenting art, architecture and performances at the Trianon Estate.
Describe how you transformed the Petit Trianon into a kind of Noh stage by calling upon the spirits of important personalities who were once guests at the Château de Versailles.
In Noh, the mediaeval form of Japanese theatre, the souls of the dead are summoned on stage as ghosts and made to speak. Likewise, I transformed the Petit Trianon into a sort of Noh stage by conjuring up, in waxwork form, the spirits of people who passed through Versailles, including the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, Salvador Dalí, Emperor Hirohito, Queen Elizabeth II, Fidel Castro and Princess Diana. Construction of the Château de Versailles got under way during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King. By photographing a wax relief made from a mould taken 10 years before Louis’ death, I have reproduced via photography a living likeness of the king. It is as if Louis XIV was photographed more than 100 years before the invention of the medium.
Explain your close connection with Marie Grosholtz, better known as Madame Tussaud, and photographing the wax figures she had made from the plaster casts of the faces of Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon Bonaparte as part of your Portraits series.
Marie Grosholtz, the artist, worked at the Château de Versailles for a number of