Hiroshi Sugito has constructed his own unique style of painting through the delicate exchanges between the concrete and the abstract; stories and paintings. Cars, houses, trees, starry skies drawn from pale pastels — soft objects that children would enjoy drawing — come into union as horizon lines, triangles, rectangles, and other geometric figures come to interlace with one another, giving life to multi-layered compositions. Within this, one can how see a small particle, such as a drop of rain, comes to take on both color and shape while expanding into space — a sensation one can seem to feel with the entire body.

This volume serves as a catalog for the ongoing exhibition of the same name currently on display at the Toyota Municipal Musem of Art. It guides the reader through the exhibition space as you turn the pages, composed from the vision manifested as it exists within Sugito’s mind. Even if the viewer of the volume has been not to the exhibition space, one can experience the poetic sentiment and architectural geometry that combine to create his paintings — where one’s imagination can freely roam from delicate features and outwards into the expansion of space of the universe. The exhibition also features “spiders,” a collaboration with architect Jun Aoki (born in 1956) and Masayuki Oishi (born in 1979). Installation views, while interwoven with works such as photographs that Sugito himself has taken, capture the undulations that flow within this space — born from the resonance of painting and architecture — into a single volume.

Design: Rie Shimoda
Text: Jun Aoki, Koichi Wada, Yoko Nose
Size B5, hard cover with cloth, 152 pages
Languages: Japanese, English
Price: 2,800 yen
ISBN978-4-907562-08-3
Publisher: torch press
Year: 2016

Hiroshi Sugito
Born in Aichi prefecture in 1970. Graduated from the Aichi Prefectural College of Arts, Faculty of Arts, Department of Japanese Painting. Held solo exhibitions such as April Song in 2006 (Vangi Sculpture Garden Museum, Shizuoka Prefecture), and Focus at the Modern Museum of Art in Texas in the same year, while also participating in numerous group exhibitions such as the 7th Annual Gwangju Biennale in 2008 and the Garden of Paintings – From the Horizon of Japan’s Zero Generation in 2010 (The National Museum of Art, Osaka). Held collaborations with Yoshitomo Nara in 2006 at A to Z (Yoshii Shuzo Soko, Hirosaki), and with architect Jun Aoki at the 2013 Aichi Triennale. Also hosted numerous solo exhibitions such as prime and foundation at the Miyagi Prefectural Museum of Art, together with frame and refrain at the Museé Bernard Buffet in 2015.