Colors of Shadow C1029

Evoking a minimalist white cube, the photographs Colours of Shadow C1029 show an all-white interior framed frontally like a two-dimensional geometric composition, simply structured by the nuances of the shadows on the walls.

It is actually the interior of a Japanese house that Hiroshi Sugimoto had covered with shikkui, a traditional Japanese lime plaster that both absorbs and reflects light evenly. The photographer strives to capture the subtlety of the shadows appearing on immaculate surfaces like so many accidental, fleeting phenomena, suggesting all the depth of the space. In this series, Sugimoto continues exploring the origin of light and his quest for formal purity tending towards abstraction based on motifs drawn from reality.

The photographs from Colours of Shadow are in the Pinault Collection. They will be exhibited for the first time during the “Au-delà de la couleur” ("Beyond Colour") show at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes in June 2021.