Hiroshi Sugimoto at the de Young

I finally got out to see the Hiroshi Sugimoto exhibit last night at the de Young since they are open to 8:45 pm on Friday nights. The new de Young museum itself I wasn't very impressed with at first, since it looks like the painted backdrop of a Star Trek: The Next Generation city from afar, but it grew on me as I went throughout the museum. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an example of such a backdrop from TNG so my google-fu must be weak today. I don't think the metal cladding on the building was a particularly felicitous choice. It seemed too sterile, and the texture was off putting. Perhaps as it ages and acquires more of a patina it will soften.

Whoever funded the entry court should get their money back. It's cold and uninviting and does not welcome lingering. However, the built-in fern court was a nice touch, and there could have been more warm touches such as that to lessen the monolithic dread of the rest of the building.

The view of San Francisco, however, from the Harmon Tower is magnificent and truly itself worth a visit to the museum. There is a small Ruth Asawa exhibit at the entrance to the elevator to visit the top of the tower, and that was nice to see since I missed the big exhibition they had early this year or last.

The Sugimoto exhibit itself was very dimly lit with the photos lit from behind. I suppose I enjoyed it, although it struck me that anything tastefully photographed and reproduced in monumental size would be impressive. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I found his compositional skills somewhat too frontal and centered. There were a number of series, and of course the seascape series was my favorite. That must've been anticipated by the curators since that's where they put the benches for folks to linger. I wasn't impressed at all by the temple photo, since it was stitched together from many photos and the joins were not seamless. That seems just careless in this day and age.

His abstract forms were good, but again, they would fall prey to the criticism of being interesting simply due to their size. I wasn't and haven't been very interested in his photos of dioramas and wax statues, but they are also compelling in an odd removed from reality twice sort of way. The series of drive-in theaters is very good and more complex visually due to jet-trails flying overhead than the similar set from theaters. I also liked his architectural photos, blurry yet still preserving some of the abstract majesty of the famous buildings that he photographed.

I also enjoyed the landscapes by Shi Guorui, a photographer in residence who is from Beijing. I found them terrifying in a nightmarish way, reminiscent of the old Twilight Zone black and white episodes. The series of photos of the 19th-century hand tools I found much less compelling. They are simply Ray-o-graphs, or photograms if you like, and disappointing compositionally, presented in a highly formal and flat way. I think they are to be linked with 19th-century Chinese immigrant labor, and if so, they did not serve that notion well.

The rest of the collection I zipped through, sparing a glance here and there since I suffer eye-fatigue at a museum fairly quickly. The Friday Nights at the de Young series is an excellent idea, and there seemed to be a crowd of people enjoying that under a massive Gerhard Richter.