Via del Castello 11, San Gimignano (SI), Italia tel. +390577943134 | [email protected] | www.galleriacontinua.com

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO

Opening: Saturday 18 October 2014 Castello di Ama – Località Ama, 11 am Galleria Continua / San Gimignano, 4–8 pm

There is a double bill in Tuscany in previous years by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Daniel Buren, Giulio Paolini, Kendell Geers, An- on Saturday 18 October: Castel- ish Kapoor, Chen Zhen, Carlos Garaicoa, Nedko lo di Ama per l’Arte contempo- Solakov, Cristina Iglesias, Louise Bourgeois, ranea and Galleria Continua, San Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, and Pascale Marthine Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins Tayou.

are pleased to welcome one of In the gallery spaces at Galleria Continua the world’s most authoritative Sugimoto is presenting a number of previ- contemporary photographers, ously unshown photos from the “Theaters” series, including Cinema Teatro Nuovo (2014), the Japanese artist Hiroshi a shot of the former cinema-theatre in San Sugimoto. Gimignano where the gallery is based. There is something almost surreal about the images, The partnership between Marco Pallanti and in which passing time, forced into a dimension Lorenza Sebasti – passionate art collectors that does not belong to it, is transmuted and the owners of the Castello di Ama wine into light that digs into the darkness, deli- estate – and Galleria Continua, San Gimignano cately bringing to the surface the elements / Beijing / Les Moulins started back in 1999, of the surrounding scene. giving rise to an artistic and cultural project which has seen artists of international fame The first photos in this series date to 1978, producing permanent site-specific works for when the artist started taking pictures of Ama, a small medieval jewel of a village nestling the interiors of 20s and 30s American thea- amidst the hills in the heart of the Chianti tres converted into cinemas, such as the Ra- area. dio City Music Hall of New York. The idea was to condense the course of time and the percep- Castello di Ama per l’Arte contemporanea is tion of space into a single moment, making the now being enriched by a further addition, en- exposure time and the duration of the film titled Confession of Zero, an installation con- screening uniform. Sugimoto describes the il- ceived by Hiroshi Sugimoto especially for the lumination that led him to create this series collection. Situated inside the eighteenth- like this: “One evening I had a near-halluci- century chapel of Villa Ricucci, and realized in natory vision. The question-and-answer ses- conjunction with Galleria Continua, the work sion that led up to this vision went something dwells on the concept of absence and the like this: Suppose you shoot a whole movie mystery of existence. in a single frame? And the answer: You get a shining screen. Immediately I sprang into ac- During the opening it will also be possible to tion, experimenting toward realizing this vi- visit the site-specific works produced at Ama sion. Dressed up as a tourist, I walked into a cheap cinema in the East Village with a large- gible models for expressing theoretical and format camera. As soon as the movie started, spiritual concepts, such as the curved sur- I fixed the shutter at a wide-open aperture, faces of Conceptual Forms: abstract mathe- and two hours later when the movie finished, matical formulas and concepts rendered into I clicked the shutter closed. That evening, I images through the photographic reproduc- developed the film, and the vision exploded tion of ancient and enigmatic “mathematical behind my eyes.” models” (small sculptures produced in an ef- fort to make the invisible visible, giving form Hiroshi Sugimoto was born in Tokyo in 1948. He and tangibility to trigonometric functions graduated from Saint Paul’s University in To- and all kinds of theorems and abstractions). kyo in 1970, and from the Art Center College Sugimoto has exhibited in museums around the of Design in Los Angeles in 1974. In the same world, and his works are held in many prestig- year he moved to New York, where he lives and ious collections: Metropolitan Museum of Art, works today. A versatile figure, he has devel- New York; , Stockholm; Centre oped his artistic practice mainly through pho- Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contem- tography, sometimes associated with sculp- porary Art, Tokyo; , New tural objects, architectural structures and York; , London; National Museum experimental exhibition set-ups. His photo- of Modern Art, Tokyo; , graphic works investigate the interrelation- Washington, D.C.; MACBA, Barcelona; Gal- ship between humans and time, nature, art, lery, London. Major solo shows include those life and history, science and religion, combin- mounted at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014), ing Eastern meditative ideas with elements of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York Western culture. Time is the dominant theme (2013), the Hara Museum of in the work of Sugimoto, who has always been in Tokyo (2012), the Scottish National Gallery interested in finding solutions to the prob- of Modern Art in Edinburgh (2011), the Neue lems of representation and visualization that Nationalgalerie in Berlin (2008), the de Young it poses. Over the years his output has been Museum in San Francisco (2007), the Hirshhorn distinguished by numerous photographic series Museum in Washington D.C. (2006), the Mori Art with different characteristics and themes, in- Museum in Tokyo (2005), the Fondation Cartier cluding: Dioramas (1976), featuring photos of pour l’Art Contemporain in Paris (2004), the stuffed animals; Theaters (1978); Seascapes Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao / Deutche Gug- (1980), photos of seascapes showing just two genheim in Berlin (2000), and the Metropolitan elements, air and water; Portraits (1999), in Museum of Art in New York (1995). In 1988 he which the subjects are waxworks of famous was awarded the Mainichi Art Prize, and in 2009 figures, the height of the concept of immor- the Association’s Praemium Im- tality. The desire to engage with the repro- periale; in 2001 his work won the prestigious duction of what is not representable has led Hasselblad Foundation International Award and the artist, over the years, to deal with tan- in 2014 the Isamu Noguchi Award.

INFORMATION FOR THE PUBLIC:

Castello di Ama – Località Ama 53013 Gaiole in Chianti (SI) Tel. +390577746031 | [email protected] | www.castellodiama.com Opening: 11 am. The private collection of the Castello di Ama is open to the public by appointment. Press office: Grassi + Partners PR Alessandro Grassi +39335.6114595 [email protected], Marina Savini +390258435112 [email protected]

GALLERIA CONTINUA / San Gimignano Via del Castello 11 and Via Arco dei Becci 1, 530137 San Gimignano (SI) Tel. +390577943134 | [email protected] | www.galleriacontinua.com Opening: 4 pm. Runs till 31 January 2015. The gallery is open to the public from Monday to Saturday, 10 am–1 pm, 2–7 pm and by appointment. Press office: Silvia Pichini [email protected], +393474536136