Yellow Sea, Cheju (Primary Title)

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Japanese, born 1948 (Artist)

1992
Japanese
Photographs
Works On Paper
Gelatin silver print
Unframed: 20 × 24 in. (50.8 × 60.96 cm)
Framed: 25 7/8 × 32 7/8 in. (65.72 × 83.5 cm)
96.95
Not on view

Every time I view the sea, I feel a calming sense of security, as if visiting my ancestral home; I embark on a voyage of seeing. –Hiroshi Sugimoto

Since the early 1970s, when Sugimoto left Japan for the United States, he has kept his subjects to a small number. In series of closely related images of movie theaters, seascapes, wax museums, and natural history dioramas, he explores the fine line between the real and unreal, the visible and invisible.

Light is often the primary vehicle for these explorations. Here a sharp horizon line bisects the scene. Haunting in its simplicity, the image reflects the abstract, elemental format adopted in each of the hundreds of photographs that make up Sugimoto’s sea images, taken around the world at all times of day and night and under various atmospheric conditions.

Edition 13/25
stamped across bottom border: "Yellow Sea Cheju 1992/19726 382"
Gift of the Collectors' Circle of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Picture This: New Photographs from the Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA, March 8 - May 25, 1997
(Sonnabend, New York) by 1996; Purchased by The Collectors' Circle, Richmond, Virginia in December of 1996; Gift to Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA in December of 1996. [1]

[1] Accessioned on December 19, 1996. See VMFA Curatorial file.
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

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