March 19, 2026
Kunié Sugiura
Reading the Rooms
Moskowitz Bayse
January 24 - March 21, 2026
kuniesugiura
Kunié Sugiura X-Ray Island at Moskowitz Bayse is a mini-retrospective that follows larger exhibitions at SFMoMA and the Johnson Museum of Art with works made at different points over Sugiura's long career. Sugiura was born in Japan in 1942, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1967) and has lived in New York since the late 1960s. For more than six-decades, Sugiura has created works that investigate photographic practices without necessarily being photographs. She has made works that incorporate X-rays, as well as photograms to examine what normally cannot be seen. Often, she blows the small up big, and reduces the large to small.
Beach 2 (1971) is an enlargement of grains of sand spanning 60 x 84 inches. This photo emulsion and acrylic on canvas work becomes so abstract that is almost impossible to identify what appears in the image. It becomes ambiguous topography. The mostly monochromatic Beach 2 asks viewers to study its surface and textures. Across the wall is Vertebra (2021). This work is composed of an array of spinal X-rays interspersed with colored rectangles. The work is a minimalist grid of 36 rectangular X-rays paired with like-sized painted shapes that transition from light yellow to dark brown across the composition. Vertebra came about after a long illness where Sugiura required repeated X-rays so in that sense it also serves as a self-portrait.
Roots (1993) is a small work where Sugiura composites X-rays so they appear to be like roots of a tree. Amongst the earliest photographs is Cko #46-V3/4 (1967), a fish-eye view that abstracts a body seated in a chair. Big Mamma (2021) enlarges a mammogram to gigantic proportions and offsets it with a rectangle painted light pink. The lines within the scan become abstracted veins akin to the blown up grains of sand in Beach 2.
LA-Day and Night (1981) and Plan to Promised Land (1980) are Sugiura's homages to Los Angeles. In LA-Day and Night she centers black and white day and night shots of a Los Angeles street between an equal-sized image of plain gray. In Plan to Promised Land black and white photographs looking up toward the top of palm trees are collaged with bright blue rectangles, representing the allure of the Los Angeles sky. While Embriwhoooh (1995) is a disturbing image made from combining many fragments of X-rays to create a monsterous form — part human, part animal, photographs like Stack, Irises (1996) and Lily Head Orange (2005) are celebrations of nature where Sugiura silhouettes the elegant forms of these flowers against monochrome backgrounds.
Sugiura's experimental work balances beauty against distorted realities. She works with and without a camera to make images that contrast photographic veracity with more painterly concerns. While the body appears in many of Sugiura's images it is never presented whole, but it appears fragmented, shadow like, or in X-ray forms. The pairing of the black and white X-rays or photograms with color contrasts the idea of death and dying with light and hope. Sugiura states in an interview in Bomb magazine, "When you see color, there’s light. Where there’s light, there’s life. That is my pairing. Maybe the X-ray part is about disease or death, but the colored panel part is a hope for the future."
Reading the Rooms
Moskowitz Bayse
January 24 - March 21, 2026
kuniesugiura
Kunié Sugiura X-Ray Island at Moskowitz Bayse is a mini-retrospective that follows larger exhibitions at SFMoMA and the Johnson Museum of Art with works made at different points over Sugiura's long career. Sugiura was born in Japan in 1942, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1967) and has lived in New York since the late 1960s. For more than six-decades, Sugiura has created works that investigate photographic practices without necessarily being photographs. She has made works that incorporate X-rays, as well as photograms to examine what normally cannot be seen. Often, she blows the small up big, and reduces the large to small.
Beach 2 (1971) is an enlargement of grains of sand spanning 60 x 84 inches. This photo emulsion and acrylic on canvas work becomes so abstract that is almost impossible to identify what appears in the image. It becomes ambiguous topography. The mostly monochromatic Beach 2 asks viewers to study its surface and textures. Across the wall is Vertebra (2021). This work is composed of an array of spinal X-rays interspersed with colored rectangles. The work is a minimalist grid of 36 rectangular X-rays paired with like-sized painted shapes that transition from light yellow to dark brown across the composition. Vertebra came about after a long illness where Sugiura required repeated X-rays so in that sense it also serves as a self-portrait.
Roots (1993) is a small work where Sugiura composites X-rays so they appear to be like roots of a tree. Amongst the earliest photographs is Cko #46-V3/4 (1967), a fish-eye view that abstracts a body seated in a chair. Big Mamma (2021) enlarges a mammogram to gigantic proportions and offsets it with a rectangle painted light pink. The lines within the scan become abstracted veins akin to the blown up grains of sand in Beach 2.
LA-Day and Night (1981) and Plan to Promised Land (1980) are Sugiura's homages to Los Angeles. In LA-Day and Night she centers black and white day and night shots of a Los Angeles street between an equal-sized image of plain gray. In Plan to Promised Land black and white photographs looking up toward the top of palm trees are collaged with bright blue rectangles, representing the allure of the Los Angeles sky. While Embriwhoooh (1995) is a disturbing image made from combining many fragments of X-rays to create a monsterous form — part human, part animal, photographs like Stack, Irises (1996) and Lily Head Orange (2005) are celebrations of nature where Sugiura silhouettes the elegant forms of these flowers against monochrome backgrounds.
Sugiura's experimental work balances beauty against distorted realities. She works with and without a camera to make images that contrast photographic veracity with more painterly concerns. While the body appears in many of Sugiura's images it is never presented whole, but it appears fragmented, shadow like, or in X-ray forms. The pairing of the black and white X-rays or photograms with color contrasts the idea of death and dying with light and hope. Sugiura states in an interview in Bomb magazine, "When you see color, there’s light. Where there’s light, there’s life. That is my pairing. Maybe the X-ray part is about disease or death, but the colored panel part is a hope for the future."