SEOUL.- Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art presents a solo exhibition of Hiroshi Sugimoto, a leading contemporary photographer, entitled Hiroshi Sugimoto, from December 5, 2013 to March 23, 2014. This exhibition marks the first solo museum exhibition to introduce the oeuvre of Sugimoto to Korean audiences. Born in Tokyo in 1948 and working in New York since 1974, Sugimoto combines conceptual depth, formalistic simplicity, and master craftsmanship in his distinctive art practice. His work has been shown internationally at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Deutsch Guggenheim (Berlin), and Mori Art Museum (Tokyo) among other prominent art museums. In 2001, he received the Hasselblad Award and in 2009 was selected by the British newspaper The Times as one of the most significant artists working since 1900 in The Times Top 200 Artists of the 20th Century to Now.

The exhibition brings together the artist’s major photographic series ranging from the late 1970s to the present, featuring his celebrated early works Theaters and Seascapes, as well as Portraits, Lightning Fields, and his recent multimedia installation, Accelerated Buddha among others. His works show his multidisciplinary scholarly interests in art, history, science, religion, and philosophy of Eastern and Western traditions.

His work that seeks the origin of human life and consciousness beyond ages and regions calling for recovery of spirituality will provide us a precious moment for meditating on our origin away from the hectic, high-velocity life of contemporary society.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948, Tokyo, Japan) has defined what it means to be a multi-disciplined contemporary artist, blurring the lines between photography, painting, installation, and most recently, architecture. His iconic photographs have bridged Eastern and Western ideologies, tracing the origins of time and societal progress along the way. Preserving and picturing memory and time is a central theme of Sugimoto’s photography, including the ongoing series Dioramas (1976– ), Theaters (1978– ), and Seascapes (1980– ). His work is held in numerous public collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The National Gallery, London; The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Smithsonian Institute of Art, Washington, D.C., and Tate, London, among others.