Hiroshi Sugimoto: Five Elements in Optical Glass
I have been photographing seascapes for more than thirty years now. It’s not a passing interest, by now I can see it will be a lifelong effort. I became interested in seascapes because they relate to memories from infancy; the very earliest thing I can picture is the sea. A sharp horizon line and a cloudless sky—here began my consciousness. From there my thoughts race to the origins of human consciousness. The sea reminds me that within my blood remain traces of human evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. Humans outstripped other species intellectually, developed civilization, art, religion and science, spinning out the strands of history. It seems to me that seascapes have the latent power to reawaken an awareness of the origins of consciousness in this present day.
The outlines of memory grow indistinct with time. I almost tend to think that memories are merely visions conjured up by the brain.
People see the world they want to see, whereupon imagination and hallucination and projection go to work. Whenever I stand on a cliff looking at the sea, I envision an infinite beyond. The horizon lies within bounds and the imagination stretches to infinity. Did we discover mathematical concepts within our own minds, or did our minds simply tap into the mathematic order abounding in the universe? Astrophysics tells us the universe has been steadily expanding since the Big Bang, its edges ever retreating from us. Which would mean “beyond infinity” gets further away from one moment to the next.
The idea of “zero” is said to have been discovered, or rather invented in India, perhaps in contrast to “one.” I exist and the world exists—with that awareness begins objectification, which is also the budding of self-consciousness. Only with this awareness of “one” did the world become countable. Our ten fingers were literally the first calculator. When things to be counted exceeded ten and became uncountable, we created “infinity.” Likewise tracing back in the reverse direction, the notion of absence or non-presence led to an awareness of non-being or “zero.” Zero might seem like a natural number, but it is not. Neither is it negative nor positive, but rather an even number extracted from the human imagination.
Religion may also be an externalization of human consciousness. In the Neolithic Age, animistic or shamanistic beliefs flourished in all parts of the world. Such pantheistic ideas of spirits manifesting in diverse phenomena gradually shifted toward that of an absolute singular deity. This image of a monotheistic god compounding transcendent powers with the human form represented both exaltation and boastful exaggeration of human consciousness. Then from among the ranks of humanity we chose persons with godlike qualities and idolized them, raising them onto the altars of the divine—Zarathustra (Zoroaster), Siddhattha Gotama (Sakyamuni Buddha), Yeshua bar Miriam (Jesus Christ) and Muhammad (Mohammed).
The process by which Sakyamuni Buddha was deified is clearly reflected in changes in the pagoda reliquaries erected to enshrine his sarira (J. shari) remains. During his lifetime, worshipping graven images was forbidden in keeping with the precept of anicca (mujo) “impermanence.” After his death, however, followers fought over his ashes and bones, their emotional adherence to the holy man reaching such heights that image of the Buddha took on a life of its own and pictorial representations appeared. At first the Buddha’s footprints were carved in stone, then whole body portrait sculptures followed. Over the next few centuries the Buddha’s words were widely interpreted and codified into the Tipitaka “Three Basket” canon of Buddhist philosophy, cosmology and law. Buddhist reliquaries likewise were originally little more than earth mounds upon which were planted umbrellas to shade the harsh Indian sun—an honor traditionally reserved for royalty—which multiplied into nine umbrellas to show even greater respect.
These in turn transformed into an ornamental sorin “ringed spire” atop layered roofs added in China. And so the delineations of what we now recognize as pagodas or sharito “relic towers” were born.
The outward forms created by the faithful were not imbued with any magic significance at first; they simply had to look resplendent to inspire reverent awe, yet over generations of worship the crafting naturally became more graceful as the iconography took on a mystic aura identified with the object of devotion. By the early Nara Period (710–794) in Japan, the Five-Storey Pagoda of Horyuji temple embodied the latest in a long line of Buddhist reliquaries transmitted from the Asian continent. If we find the proportions of the Horyuji Pagoda pleasing to this day, exhibiting a perfect balance of architectural members, how much more so must it have appealed to those in ancient times who revered the untold relics inside? No doubt the depth of their Buddhist faith owed a great deal to the aesthetics of the towering structure, for once such a beautiful form was created it conversely called for an investment of transcendent meanings. Came the Heian Period (794–1185), the shape of sharito took on a unique new sculptural direction based upon esoteric Buddhist scriptures, namely the cosmological doctrine of Five Universals: the elements of earth, water, fire, wind, and emptiness. In a bold attempt to make Buddha’s relic container symbolize the very cosmos, the gorinto “five-element pagoda” was to express tenets of pure faith in purest geometric forms: earth as a cube emphasizing materiality; water as a sphere of self-evident clarity, fire as a pyramid in imitation of pointed flames; wind as a hemisphere expressing its power to cut through whole matter; and emptiness—formlessness—paradoxically in the form of a cintamani (hoju) “mystic gem” whose droplet-like shape disappears instantly into a perfect globe, an image of the cosmic void closing upon itself.
Mathematics attempts to represent the world by substitution in numeric notation, a scheme of understanding I would liken to my own wont to trace everything back to questions of aesthetics and belief. I, however, no longer have anything to idolize. With deity or Buddha both vanished from this day and age, in what can I take refuge? Just perhaps the only object of devotion I have left is the origin of my consciousness, the sea. And so in this Five-Element Pagoda made of optical glass I enshrine a seascape within the water sphere.
Hiroshi Sugimoto Five Elements, 2011 (October 7, 2011–July 15, 2012)
All Five Elements in the exhibition consist of optical quality glass with black and white film. The works in the right wing of the Chinati special exhibition gallery, starting from the two south windows, refer to the following oceans or seas Sugimoto photographed as Seascapes since 1980:
LAKE SUPERIOR, EAGLE RIVER
BAY OF SAGAMI, ATAMI
NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN, CAPE BRETON
SEA OF JAPAN, RISHIRI ISLAND
BALTIC SEA, RUGEN
KATTEGAT, KULLABERG
GULF OF BOTHNIA, HOLIC
LAKE SUPERIOR, CASCADE RIVER
ENGLISH CHANNEL, WESTON CLIFF
YELLOW SEA, CHEJU
DEAD SEA, EN GEDI
MARMAR SEA, SILIVLI
The works in the left wing of the special exhibition gallery, starting from the two south windows, refer to the following oceans or seas:
SEA OF JAPAN,OKI
MEDITERRANEAN SEA, LA GALERE
MEDITERRANEAN , LA CIOTAT
SEA OF OKHOTSK, HOKKAIDOS
TASMAN SEA, NGARUPUPU
NORWEGIAN SEA, VESTERALEN ISLAND
NORTH SEA, BERRIEDALE
IRISH SEA, ISLE OF MAN
IONIAN SEA, SANTA CESAREA
INDIAN OCEAN, BALI
BAY OF BISCAY, BAKI
BLACK SEA, OZULUCE
The sculpture in the connecting gallery is:
MATHEMATICAL MODEL 006, 2006, Aluminum and mirror
The Chinati Foundation is very grateful to Hiroshi Sugimoto for the installation and to the Odawara Foundation for the loans to this exhibition. The Chinati Foundation would also like to recognize the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the Shifting Foundation for their generous support of this exhibition.