In this exhibition of black-and-white photographs, Hiroshi Sugimoto defamiliarizes canonical works of modern architecture. Using extended exposures and odd camera angles, he transforms icons like the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Brooklyn Bridge into visual enigmas, shadowy and suggestively blurred. The twin cylindrical towers of Chicago’s Marina City, designed by Mies van der Rohe disciple Betram Goldberg, are shot against a background of brooding stratus clouds. Because of the tonal and textural similarities between the mottled sky and the building’s crenulated facade, the towers almost seem to be dematerializing. It’s as if Sugimoto were attempting to undo the process of reification by which our notions of the modern, the contemporary, and the cosmopolitan become embedded in the edifices we build.
