Alison Bradley Projects is delighted to announce that Kunié Sugiura's photogram, Clematis B, has been acquired by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, through the generosity of their Friends of Photography Acquisition Committee.
From the 1980s on, Sugiura started working with photograms, putting her subjects directly onto photosensitive paper and exposing them to light. Using flowers, fish, frogs, kittens, and, later, artists and scientists, she produced an extraordinary array of "portraits of life." Some of her photograms of flowers were exhibited at MoMA in 1997 in the New Photography 13 show curated by Susan Kismaric. Sugiura was always deeply inspired by flowers and used them profusely in her work. As she explains, “I like nature… Plants, animals, natural phenomena. I like to be with nature, with peace.”
Since its opening in 1973, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art has showcased its collection of art spanning six millennia and encompassing art from most world cultures. As such, we are thrilled for Sugiura's crucial work to be held in such an esteemed and significant public collection.
Kunié Sugiura (b. 1942, Nagoya) was born and raised in Japan. After briefly studying science in Tokyo, she moved to the United States to study photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received her BFA in 1967.
During the 1970s, Sugiura’s practice combined photography with acrylic paint on canvas. Her photo-paintings remain some of her most seminal works. In the 1980s, she began creating photograms using objects from everyday life including flowers, plants, animals, which led her to create her famous Artist and Scientist series that depict the silhouettes of luminaries such as Yayoi Kusama, Jasper Johns, Carolee Schneemann, and Dr. James Watson.
Sugiura’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide. Her works can be found in prestigious private collections, museums and cultural institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; the Princeton University Art Museum; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; the Denver Art Museum; the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography; Tochigi Prefecture Museum of Art; Hiroshima MOCA, Hiroshima; the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; and the Tate Modern, London.
Sugiura lives and works in Chinatown, New York City.
