Pace Opens Second London Gallery with Rothko/Sugimoto

Tags: Abstract Expressionism, London, Pace Gallery, Photography, Upcoming Exhibitions

After much anticipation, the Pace Gallery is launching its second London gallery at 6 Burlington Gardens, just north of the Royal Academy’s Burlington House in Mayfair. To christen the new 9,000 square foot space, it will host Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes, an exhibition which will pair Mark Rothko’s late grayscale works against Hiroshi Sugimoto’s contemporary photographs of bodies of water.

The exhibition will be the first private gallery showing in London of Rothko’s works in over 50 years. It will feature 8 acrylic works by the late Abstract Expressionist (left) alongside 8 gelatin silver prints of the Japanese artist (right). The side-by-side presentation will allow visitors to ponder the different artistic goals being explored by each artist, from Rothko’s internal methodologies to Sugimoto’s approach to redefining photography.

In preparation for the exhibition, Sugimoto prepared the following statement:

“For several decades I have created seascapes. Not depicting the world in photographs, I’d like to think, but rather projecting my internal seascapes onto the canvas of the world. Skies now forming bright rectangles, water now melting into dark fluid rectangles. I sometimes think I see a dark horizon cutting across Mark Rothko’s paintings. It’s then I unconsciously realize that paintings are more truthful than photographs and photographs are more illusory than paintings.”

The exhibition will run from October 4 – November 17, 2012.

[Via Pace London]

Photo via Pace London, Courtesy of Kate Rothko Prizel and Christopher Rothko / Artist Rights Society, New York (ARS) / Hiroshi Sugimoto