Rothko/Sugimoto - Pace Gallery

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes (4 October - 17 November) is the inaugural exhibition at Pace London. 
The juxtaposition of Mark Rothko's late black and grey paintings with Hiroshi Sugimoto's minimalist seascape photographs is, perhaps, an obvious pairing but, nevertheless, offers a rare and delicious prospect. (If, like me, you are excited by what Mark Brown in The Guardian predicts will be one of the 'greyest exhibitions' of the year!)
The exhibition comprises eight paintings by Rothko and eight photographs by Sugimoto. Rothko's paintings are all from 1969, the year before he committed suicide and in which he abandoned his characteristic use of colour for a limited palette of black and grey.
Sugimoto's seascapes are similarly limited in palette: 

“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.” (From Pace Gallery website.)

(NB the images here are merely representative of the artists' work and not necessarilly of works included included in the exhibition.)

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Installation view of Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes