Hiroshi Sugimoto. Opera House, a selection for Bergamo

L'Carrara Academy presents the exhibition Hiroshi Sugimoto. Opera House as part of the exhibition project concluding the exhibition Tutta in voi la luce mia. History painting and melodrama. Hiroshi Sugimoto, born in Tokyo in 1948, is a multifaceted artist who has also gained recognition as an architect and designer as well as a photographer. His artistic research began at a very young age, exploring different disciplines including theatre and cinema.

In the 1970s, Sugimoto posed the question of whether it was possible to capture the entire frame flow of a film in a single photographic shot. This concept of compressing time and cinematic reality resulted in a series of photographs initially called Theaters and now renamed Opera House. In this series, the artist focuses mainly on the north and central Italy, capturing theatres of various sizes between 2013 and 2016. The images show not only the stage with the screen, but also offer a view of the stalls and the gallery.

The exhibition displays eight theatres photographed by Sugimoto, representing some of the most innovative and fascinating architecture of performing arts in Italy. These theatres are the work of renowned architects such as Andrea Palladio, Giovan Battista Aleotti, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Francesco Tadolini and Leopoldo Pollack, called upon to meet the expectations of cultured and demanding customers.

In Opera House, time becomes the regulator of the relationship between the photographer and the subject, the viewer and the work. Sugimoto captures a time seemingly suspended in the white of the screen at the centre of the image, a dazzling white that has consumed the cinematic narrative. This explosion of light illuminates the empty structure of the theatre, without an audience, inviting the viewer to create his own story in the flow of frames as a projection of passing time.