Hiroshi Sugito

signed and titled in English and dated 1997,1999 on the reverse

Margrit Brehm, ed., The Japanese Experience, Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2002, p. 153, illustrated in colour

The work is in good condition overall. There are no apparent condition issues with this work.
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Born in Nagoya, Hiroshi Sugito graduated from Aichi Prefectural University of Arts in 1993. His paintings combine the formal training he received as an art student with his seemingly childlike, yet allegorical and often meditative visions. In 1996, Sugito was awarded a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Nebraska, U.S.A. He received the VOCA (Vision of Contemporary Art) Prize in 1997 and the Nagoya City Artistic Creation Prize in 2000. Sugito has had many international solo exhibitions including those in Tokyo, Nagoya, New York, Los Angeles, and Zurich. He has also participated in many widely acclaimed group exhibitions in Japan, Germany, Poland, and the UK. 

The Entrance (Lot 752) is a definitive work by Sugito. It appears at first, like many other works by the artist, to suggest a tribute to monochrome or minimalist sensibility: the work has almost no perspective, with a composition made of blocks of color and simple line. Upon closer investigation, however, the decorative touches and subtle additions reveal an understated beauty and gestural movement within the painting. Trained in the painting methods of Nihonga, literally translated as 'Japanese-style painting,' Sugito's oeuvre represents a quiet dialogue between traditional compositions and structures, and elements of fairytale-like dreams and other transient moments found in the inner mind.

There is first precision in his work, a seemingly natural balance of innovative painterly technique and delicate use of color. This balance is unsettled only momentarily by the inclusion of little boats, small engines of modernity, coasting upon a vast sea; purposefully drawn so small and minutely that they are practically invisible from afar. This invites his viewers to come in close to the work; to carefully examine every centimeter, regardless the size of a canvas. This precision extends to his flawless simulation of a child's drawing, complete with the innocence and naiveté of a child. But his work can not be called a child's dream, rather one of his many private interiors, places hidden from this material world, only to reside in the sphere of the artist's mind. While his contemporaries in Japan fill their canvases with animation and characters from manga or the 'cult of kawaii,' Sugito undoubtedly finds inspiration elsewhere. Instead of the pre-packaged fantasy and iconography which runs rampant in today's visual culture, Sugito's work esteems the personal and the distinctive images found in the psyche of the individual. 

Sugito's paintings can most readily be interpreted as visions and his canvases as the stages for his unique imagination. The Entrance is no exception. Its gentle composition coalesced with the richness of the empty space recalls Japanese traditional painting, while the rectangular forms on each side of the canvas evoke the shape of theatrical curtains or draperies perhaps suggesting a view into a singular moment of transcendence, a theme which resonates throughout his other work. The softness of the color reveals a kind of ephemeral narrative, static only by this artist's palette. The expansive blue ocean reveals a contemplative state of meditation for whoever looks upon the canvas, inducing a genuine calmness, yet with it, an uncanny dreamlike sensation.