細見美術館

Sugimoto Hiroshi is a contemporary artist world-renowned for his photographic series Dioramas, Theatres, and Seascapes. He also has experience as a dealer of pre-modern works and incorporates traditional Japanese art into his own creations as shown by, for example, Sea of Buddhas, which takes as its subject matter the sculptures of Sanjūsangendō Temple in Kyoto. Moreover, at the exhibition History of History, which travelled the world from 2003, he unveiled installations that combined pre-modern art with his own works.

At this exhibition, Art and Leisure, we are displaying arrangements in 25 decorative alcoves, or tokonoma, that comprise artworks from the Heian to the Edo period, those that were passed down through the generations in Western countries, as well as rare objects from the Showa era. These are recreations of arrangements that Sugimoto created to entertain famous individuals of various professions for a series, “The Enigmatic Restaurant Misenkyō,” featured in the magazine Fujin Gahō. Sugimoto is creating a new form of “art” by combining rare and valued, old and new objects that were collected according to his “taste.” This exhibition will present to visitors the beauty and depth of work by Sugimoto, an individual who is surpassing the boundaries of contemporary art.