Another reminder of how great and enriching contemporary art can be. There's something of the wunderkammer to Sugimoto's design for the main work here, the "Lost Human Genetic Archive" itself - a succession of dimly-lit rooms divided by standing corrugated iron partitions, in which the artist imagines a series of scenarios in which the world could end, and gives voice to them through a singular last survivor and an installed jumble of objects and art pieces, sometimes only one or two, for others with far more, mixing types and periods. There are times when it is a bit rough edged, the ideology a bit too self-evident and simplistic, undergraduate even - but the forcefulness of the whole prevails nonetheless. An example, to illustrate:
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26 The fetishist
Today the world died. Or maybe yesterday. Back in the Neolithic Age, people found magical things to worship in the natural world. Eventually we came to fashion sacred objects with our own hands. This stone rod is an idol, a phallic symbol thought to have figured in fertility rites. Even later advancements in civilisation did not change humans so very much. In modern society, we still worshipped latter-day idols and brand-name luxury goods. We discriminated against people by the cars they drove and the clothes they wore. Though, of course, fake items were rife. But as copying techniques became ultrarefined, the fakes surpassed even the originals. Fetishism lost its magic; people lost their objects of faith. When the market for brand-name goods collapsed, the global economy contracted, swallowed down into a Great Depression. The ancient gods who banned idolatry were right: A world that believes in nothing is a dead world.
Stone Rod
Jomon period (10000-400 BC)
117 cm
Hospital Gurney
1950s
56 x 214 x 39cm
YSL Pattern Fabric
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Also: "Abandoned Theatre", a series of photos of just that, each lit at its centre by a shining white screen which is the result of the exposure of the film for the entire duration of a particular film. And "Sea of Buddha", which are striking large-format images of the statues in Kyoto's Rengeo-in Temple, together with a small glass pagoda constructed by Sugimoto himself.
* * *
26 The fetishist
Today the world died. Or maybe yesterday. Back in the Neolithic Age, people found magical things to worship in the natural world. Eventually we came to fashion sacred objects with our own hands. This stone rod is an idol, a phallic symbol thought to have figured in fertility rites. Even later advancements in civilisation did not change humans so very much. In modern society, we still worshipped latter-day idols and brand-name luxury goods. We discriminated against people by the cars they drove and the clothes they wore. Though, of course, fake items were rife. But as copying techniques became ultrarefined, the fakes surpassed even the originals. Fetishism lost its magic; people lost their objects of faith. When the market for brand-name goods collapsed, the global economy contracted, swallowed down into a Great Depression. The ancient gods who banned idolatry were right: A world that believes in nothing is a dead world.
Stone Rod
Jomon period (10000-400 BC)
117 cm
Hospital Gurney
1950s
56 x 214 x 39cm
YSL Pattern Fabric
* * *
Also: "Abandoned Theatre", a series of photos of just that, each lit at its centre by a shining white screen which is the result of the exposure of the film for the entire duration of a particular film. And "Sea of Buddha", which are striking large-format images of the statues in Kyoto's Rengeo-in Temple, together with a small glass pagoda constructed by Sugimoto himself.
