HIROSHI SENJU

THERE IS STILL A LIGHT

HIROSHI SENJU

THERE IS STILL A LIGHT

SUNDARAM TAGORE LONDON

MAY 3 – 21, 2023

I could not be more delighted to launch our newest gallery with the glorious paintings by Hiroshi Senju pictured on these pages. Opening a gallery in London fulfils a longstanding desire to have an enduring physical presence in this dynamic, international city. I believe the best way to experience art— particularly the tactile, process-driven art that we champion—is to stand in front of it. I am so pleased you can now do just that.

–Sundaram Tagore

THERE IS STILL A LIGHT

We are pleased to launch our London gallery with a new series of paintings by Hiroshi Senju (b. 1958, Tokyo). The New York-based artist is renowned for his monumental waterfall images installed in public spaces and museums around the world.

In the new body of work Senju has created especially for London, the artist breathes new energy into his iconic black-and-white waterfalls, suffusing them with color. Seen together, these immersive paintings celebrate a universal human experience—the power of the natural world to evoke awe and wonder.

Senju has been exploring the sublime power of nature for more than 30 years. He began painting waterfalls in the 1990s and today they are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and The Art Institute of Chicago, where a site-specific fluorescent waterfall installation was recently showcased in a gallery designed by Pritzker Prizewinning architect Tadao Ando.

In this body of work, Senju imagines stepping behind the falls to look at the landscape beyond it through the cascading curtain of water. Peering through this

veil, he visualizes a vibrant scene, which he distills into abstract columns of color. In these works, the misty screen of white water is transformed into muted ribbons of crimson, orange, olive green and pale purple.

Senju was inspired to expand his color palette after his experience in New York during the pandemic lockdown. Working in isolation with ample time for keen observation, he became acutely aware of the immense range of shades within each leaf, flower and blade of grass in his garden. He found himself closely attuned to the changes around him as he watched the natural world shift from dull and lifeless in winter to vibrant and exuberant in spring. For him, this transformation reflected a sense of hope and optimism at a bleak time, which he sought to infuse in his work.

Senju created these works using bespoke natural pigments produced in Japan as well as manmade pigments. His robustly physical process involves pouring pigments downward from the top of the painting mimicking the trajectory of gushing water. He also uses spray guns and airbrushes to create the sensation of mist, fracturing light into a spectrum of color like a prism.

Senju’s decades-long preoccupation with waterfalls is an homage to the natural world. Although his deep respect for Japanese culture and traditions has given him a particular reverence for and aesthetic appreciation of nature’s qualities, he views these as collective values that unite humankind. As we continue to grapple with climate change, the visual immediacy of his falls are a potent reminder not only to respect but also protect what’s left of our environment.

The falls, in his view, are a powerful example of a life-giving, universal force that we can all appreciate, no matter how different we appear to be. Standing before these paintings, the senses and imagination are activated—one can almost hear the rushing water and feel the dampness in the air.

When you see the many diverse colors in nature, it is an effect of light reflection. So even in the darkest times, I am painting light.

–Hiroshi Senju

Waterfall on Colors

2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 191.4 inches/194 x 486 cm

Waterfall on Colors 2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 89.5 inches/162 x 227 cm

Waterfall on Colors 2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 89.5 inches/162 x 227 cm

Waterfall on Colors

2022, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 191.4 inches/194 x 486 cm

Waterfall on Colors 2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 89.5 inches/162 x 227 cm

Waterfall on Colors

2022, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 191.4 inches/194 x 486 cm

Waterfall

2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 89.5 inches/162 x 227 cm

Waterfall 2023, platinum and pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 63.8 inches/162 x 162 cm

Waterfall 2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.8 x 76.3 inches/162 x 194 cm

Waterfall

2023, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 63.75 x 89.5 inches/161.9 x 227 cm

And when the night is cloudy There is still a light that shines on me Shine until tomorrow Let it be

–Paul McCartney

HIROSHI SENJU

New York-based painter Hiroshi Senju (b. 1958, Tokyo) is renowned worldwide for his sublime waterfall and cliff images, which are often monumental in scale. He combines a minimalist visual language rooted in Abstract Expressionism with elements of traditional Japanese painting.

Hiroshi Senju was the first Asian artist to receive an Honorable Mention Award at the Venice Biennale (1995), and has participated in numerous exhibitions including The New Way of Tea, curated by Alexandra Munroe, at the Japan Society and Asia Society, New York, 2002; Paintings on Fusuma at the Tokyo National Museum, 2003; and Frontiers Reimagined at the Venice Biennale, 2015. In 2021, Senju produced a monumental, site-specific fluorescent waterfall installation for The Art Institute of Chicago. It was on view for eight months in a gallery in the Asian wing designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando. The 50-foot-wide folding screens are now part of the museum’s permanent collection. Among his many honors, Senju was awarded the Foreign Minister’s Commendation from the Japanese government for contributions to art in 2017, and in the same year, was honored with the Isamu Noguchi Award.

Notable public installations include seventy-seven murals at Juko-in, a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji, a Zen Buddhist temple in Japan, and multiple monumental waterfalls at Tokyo

International Airport (Haneda). The Benesse Art Site of Naoshima Island houses two large-scale installations.

The artist’s monumental cliff and waterfall paintings for the Kongobuji Temple at Koyasan—a UNESCO World Heritage Site and sacred Buddhist monument—traveled to museums throughout Japan before being consecrated and installed in 2020. Assouline released a lavish coffee-table volume titled Koyasan: Senju’s Works of Art 1,200 Years After Kukai featuring 100 color photographs documenting this historic project in 2022.

Senju’s work is in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama, Japan; the Yamatane Museum of Art, Tokyo; Tokyo University of the Arts; and the Kushiro Art Museum, Hokkaido. In 2009, Skira Editore published a monograph of his work titled Hiroshi Senju. The Hiroshi Senju Museum Karuizawa in Japan opened in 2011.

SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERIES

The gallery has been representing established and emerging artists from around the world since 2000, showing work that is aesthetically and intellectually rigorous, infused with humanism and art historically significant. The gallery specializes in paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations with a strong emphasis on materiality. Our artists cross cultural and national boundaries, synthesizing Western visual language with forms, techniques and philosophies from Asia, the Subcontinent and the Middle East. We show this work alongside important work by underrepresented women from the New York School. The gallery also has a robust photography program that includes some of the world’s most noted photographers.

NEW YORK

542 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001 • +1 212 677 4520 gallery@sundaramtagore.com

SINGAPORE

5 Lock Road 01-05, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108933 • +65 6694 3378 singapore@sundaramtagore.com

LONDON

4 Cromwell Place, Gallery 8, London, SW7 2JE • +44 (0)20 8057 0789 gallery@sundaramtagore.com

President and Curator: Sundaram Tagore

Senior Director, New York: Susan McCaffrey

Director, Singapore: Melanie Taylor

Director, New York: Kathryn McSweeney

Associate Director, New York: Eric Chelman

Senior Registrar: Julia Occhiogrosso

Designer: Russell Whitehead

Editorial support: Kieran Doherty

WWW.SUNDARAMTAGORE.COM

Installation photos by Cesare De Giglio

ISBN: 979-8-9882323-0-8

Cover: Waterfall on Colors (detail), 2022, pigments on Japanese mulberry paper mounted on board, 76.3 x 191.4 inches/194 x 486 cm

All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.