Singapore Art Museum

Renowned Japanese contemporary artist and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto’s first major solo exhibition in Southeast Asia lands at Singapore Art Museum. Titled Form is Emptiness, a line drawn from foundational Buddhist text, the exhibition features over 60 works and fossils from his personal collection that outline five decades of artistic journey and expression. Inspired by the concept of the Five Elements in Buddhist philosophy (earth, water, fire, air and space), the showcase unfolds in the shape of a mandala, inviting viewers to explore the works in a looping motion that feels continuous and seamless rather than linear. It also reflects the themes in Sugimoto’s works, which are marked by his curiosity and fascination with time and metaphysics. Beyond photography, the exhibition also dives into the expansion of the Tokyo-born artist’s photographic thinking, featuring his works in sculpture, large-scale installation, writing, and architectural design. Artwork highlights include the Brush Impression, Heart Sutra (2023), a magnificent curved wall with 288 gelatine silver calligraphy prints of Kanji characters, as well as U.A. Walker, New York (1978) and Tyrrhenian Sea, Scilla (1993), a series of black-and-white photographs of theatres and landscapes.

One of Southeast Asia’s leading contemporary artists is taking over the Singapore Art Museum for a major solo exhibition. Titled Afterimage, this three-month-long showcase centres on Manila-based artist Maria Taniguchi, exploring the ideas of repetition, time and labour through some of her monumental artworks, which include paintings, sculptures and video installations. At the centre of the exhibition is her ongoing series of untitled “brick” paintings that began nearly two decades ago. These large canvases, some of which are several metres tall, feature thousands of rows of tiny black rectangles meticulously outlined in graphite. More than just abstract artworks, these paintings reflect on the process and hard work that went into each piece. Other unmissable exhibition highlights include a site-specific iteration of her Runaways sculptures, carved out of Java Plum wood, and four moving-image works that were produced in the last 16 years. Taniguchi’s works have been presented at various major museums, galleries, and biennales all over the world, including the Biennale of Sydney and Taipei Fine Arts Museum. In 2015, she won the Hugo Boss Asia Art Award for Emerging Asian Artists.