Hiroshi Sugimoto's largest solo exhibition in Asia, titled "Form Is Emptiness," has opened at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), running until October 4. The show features over 60 works spanning nearly all of his major series, including photography, sculpture, video, calligraphy, and fossil specimens. Curated through the lens of Buddhist emptiness—a concept inspired by the Heart Sutra—the exhibition was organized by SAM CEO Eugene Tan and curators Angelica Ong and Amy Cheng. It marks Sugimoto's first major retrospective in Southeast Asia, coinciding with a concurrent survey at Japan's National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.
The exhibition matters because it presents a fresh conceptual framework for understanding Sugimoto's five-decade career, emphasizing how his Japanese heritage and Buddhist studies have shaped his philosophical approach to photography and art. By framing his work through the prism of emptiness, SAM offers a unique Asian perspective that even Sugimoto himself had not previously considered. This retrospective also underscores Sugimoto's pivotal role in elevating photography as a fine art medium, while highlighting Singapore's growing ambition to host major international art figures and produce intellectually rigorous exhibitions.