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Lot Essay
Executed in 1995, Lake Superior, Cascade River is a serene and technically accomplished photograph by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Internationally acclaimed, this work has a rich exhibition history having previously been installed in major museum shows in Madrid, Lisbon, London, and Tokyo. Created on a striking, large scale, the work reflects the immense grandeur of the open water, stretching out into the distance as it meets the sky. Captured with an old-fashioned large format camera, Sugimoto uses a short exposure measured in fractions of a second to reflect the infinite ripples rolling along the lake's surface, glistening in the light of the moon.
The artist began his series of Seascapes in 1980, photographing bodies of water across the world. They are not geographical depictions however; instead they are attempts to distill onto film the qualities of light, air, water and atmosphere. With its near abstract quality and clean aesthetic, Lake Superior, Cascade River recalls the majestic and soulful, black on black works carried out by Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko in the 1960s. It is also hard not to look at Sugimoto's photograph without thinking of Caspar David Friedrich's romantic approach to the watery landscape. Whilst Friedrich invokes the subjective experience of nature however, Sugimoto takes a more dispassionate view. For the artist these are not specific seas or lakes, but rather 'something primordial or from a timeless future, elemental presented at the child-like moment of discovery, as yet unnamed but at the very moment man must name it' (K. Brougher, 'Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories in Black and White', Sugimoto, exh. cat., Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundacin 'la Caixa', Madrid 1998, p. 134).
The artist began his series of Seascapes in 1980, photographing bodies of water across the world. They are not geographical depictions however; instead they are attempts to distill onto film the qualities of light, air, water and atmosphere. With its near abstract quality and clean aesthetic, Lake Superior, Cascade River recalls the majestic and soulful, black on black works carried out by Ad Reinhardt and Mark Rothko in the 1960s. It is also hard not to look at Sugimoto's photograph without thinking of Caspar David Friedrich's romantic approach to the watery landscape. Whilst Friedrich invokes the subjective experience of nature however, Sugimoto takes a more dispassionate view. For the artist these are not specific seas or lakes, but rather 'something primordial or from a timeless future, elemental presented at the child-like moment of discovery, as yet unnamed but at the very moment man must name it' (K. Brougher, 'Hiroshi Sugimoto: Memories in Black and White', Sugimoto, exh. cat., Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundacin 'la Caixa', Madrid 1998, p. 134).