Hiroshi Sugimoto and Gabriel Orozco in Conversation, Moderated by Mami Kataoka

The artists share their thoughts on process, architecture and the Japanese aesthetic with the director of the Mori Art Museum. This conversation, celebrating the work of both artists, takes place on the occasion of Theory of Colours, our solo exhibition by Sugimoto at Galerie Marian Goodman. The conversation was recorded this Spring at the Enoura Observatory, Japan, which is part of the Odawara Art Foundation.

00:21
Mami Kataoka
Well, very nice to meet you both here. Such a wonderful day, and probably I would like to start asking about your last year, how you had been spending in 2020 and COVID… You were in Japan, no?

00:40
Gabriel Orozco
Most of the time, with a few trips to Mexico City. And I have a show in New York, but I produced most of the show in lockdown in my apartment… very portable exhibition, which I couldn't assist at the opening. But yes, most of the lock down has been Tokyo and with a little bit of Mexico.

01:03
Mami Kataoka
Yeah, I was thinking about your earlier pieces, which are always paying attention to the everyday objects under this lockdown situation and everybody was facing the everyday, sort of the extraordinary condition within the everyday surroundings. Did any kind of awareness or consciousness change?

01:31
Gabriel Orozco
At the end I think that what changes the most for me was a sense of time, change, timing. And I lost a little track of the days of the week because normally I work in where I live. I work in the kitchen or in the living room or in the dining room or wherever. I found a good table to work. So it was kind of normal to be indoors. So it didn't feel so different from my everyday life. But the time changed, and connection with the public areas, with the private areas, the circulation with other people, the social life is what gives you a sense of time.

02:21
Hiroshi Sugimoto
You know, before the lockdown, I spent, probably, I spent most of my time in airplanes. And especially two years ago, I had a show in Paris, and then also the Paris Opera Productions. So I [went] around the globe two and a half times. So every week I have to move somewhere, [and] all of a sudden it stopped. So I used to remember which days of the week and even the month. But now I don't go anywhere, so I don't need to memorize myself which day which there. So that's a very, very special feeling. And I am very, very comfortable. I am so lucky not to move around free from the jetlag, and I feel like I'm human.

03:21
Mami Kataoka
But in this sense, suddenly given time, Hiroshi, you are writing a book about, you know, all these strange stories in relation to Enoura Observatory.

03:33
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Yeah. How do I somebody who comes to this point, and I have so many collections of stones, this house… And so I was able to spend a concentrated three months every day writing pages and pages. So thank you for this COVID thing… I was able to, yeah, I was given the time and I was given the time to think about it and given the time to write something about it. Yeah, so I need this.

04:10
Mami Kataoka
It's a perfect timing, but it's interesting to see that Gabriel is planning this big park in Mexico and Hiroshi has done this very big 12000 acres of the huge garden. I remember you said you were looking at or referring to records of garden-making (sakuteiki) from 11th century. How did this whole idea - it's not only Garden making, with the entire observatory? Where did you start to plan this land?

04:52
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Well, quite some time ago I started thinking about acquiring this land, 20 years ago, and start dealing with the local owners of the land. And then 10 years ago I start making up plans. And then only three years ago, after collecting many, many interesting objects and then three years… construction is very, very condensed. Construction-wise, do it faster and cheaper. So that now, it's open, three years ago. But now, I keep working almost every week here, some kind of construction, new construction site. So this continues till my end of my life. So this is the last piece of my art.

05:47
Gabriel Orozco
You think so, the last piece of your art? Well, is a growing piece…

05:48
Hiroshi Sugimoto
So, as long as my art [is] selling well, then, this art keeps expanding.

06:02
Mami Kataoka
But, this idea, the idea of the growing garden…

06:06
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Yes.

06:07
Mami Kataoka
Is it common, historically, that a garden keeps changing?

06:11
Hiroshi Sugimoto
The famous cultivated Katsura Villa, a garden that’s three generations in the making… So I like the very first original part, and then the second generation, third generation, getting more decorative. But the first one is very, very simple. Minimalistic aesthetics. So Katsura’s my main competitor now. I learned a lot from the stone composition. You can see that… influence of Katsura. But beyond that, I have developed my own taste and sense, and now 21st century. But that was built in the 16th century, 17th century. But I think no garden designer can do better than Katsura, they’re still the best. So. This is my challenge.

07:08
Gabriel Orozco
Sakuteiki.

07:09
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Starting from how to choose the stone. Absolutely. Stone placement. It’s something I read a long time ago. Other books about stone placement and scholar rocks and the making of the base and the placement. But then in the garden and this book, this writing … it's a gardener who wrote it, these first principles of stone placing, and they were gardens for the emperor at the end. So they were gardening. And this is interesting: in Japan, many gardens are private land, and then became public afterwards. But they start from a palace or a monastery or something. And the sense of scale changes also, it’s small, but also becomes bigger. It’s complex. So, into this tradition, Japanese, let's say, gardening is very well combined with public and private spaces

08:06
Mami Kataoka
And Japanese garden making, with my limited understanding, is of two different kinds: one is more to sort of to copy the natural landscape, and the other is more structured like a Zen garden. Sometimes it's a reflection of the cosmic movement onto the sand garden. And looking at your South London Gallery one, it is a permanent garden right?

08:34
Gabriel Orozco
It’s a permanent garden, yeah, in the South London Gallery…

08:37
Mami Kataoka
With a lot of circles, and kind of like ripples of the water - we can see it on the dry garden.

08:46
Gabriel Orozco
This garden is a combination of different schools, in a way, of gardening. And also in my work, I use circles, but they come a lot from childhood memories, the use of circular forms, but also from the influence of some Indian art, especially some form of Buddhist imaginary tool… it is a very strange combination of different factors, why I decided to use circular forms, but when they asked me, the London people, to design a garden, I really didn't know what to say. I didn't say… I say no, you have gardeners, you are English, you have great gardeners. I don’t know why you want a Mexican. So it was, really, I was not… I couldn't believe it. They asked me to do a garden.

09:33
Hiroshi Sugimoto
A house called the Observatory, right by the sea. Yes, here’s also called “observatory”

09:38
Gabriel Orozco
Yes.

09:40
Hiroshi Sugimoto
We have something in common.

09:41
Gabriel Orozco
And that's true. Like this one… is in a hill and you see - I built it there because you have a 360 view and it is based on an observatory in India. The Jantar Mantar.

09:50
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Ah, the famous one.

09:54
Gabriel Orozco
Yes, absolutely. And I took measurements of this observatory, and then I rebuilt it. So it was a little bit of a transportation of this observatory to this hill, because it was made for naked eye views, because it was before the invention of the telescope. So this is a little bit like the Poincaré models that we have here, it was a kind of three dimensional instrument, a scale one to one for the human body to look at the stars, the heavens, and also to control agriculture. So it was very much functioning for agricultural purposes, which is the origin of most of the observatories, is for agricultural policies. So that's why this land is also agricultural. It’s an observatory. And it’s a garden, but it's also a garden that works, that has function. And that house in Mexico, I planned it for ten years. I built it in two and a half years and it was opened in 2006. But it’s a house. We spent…

11:12
Mami Kataoka
Hiroshi, you also copied the Roman theater?

11:17
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Roman theater, yes, you saw.

11:20
Gabriel Orozco
Copied the idea, but you didn't bring it.

11:22
Mami Kataoka
No, you measured…

11:22
Hiroshi Sugimoto
I measured it.

11:23
Mami Kataoka
You measured it? Oh, ok.

11:24
Hiroshi Sugimoto
I found, while I was traveling, the local city in Italy. Wow! This is perfect size for me.

11:33
Gabriel Orozco
So this is a one-to-one reproduction.

11:36
Hiroshi Sugimoto
And, only I changed the seating sizes, five centimeters wider, because the people have to pass by. So I adjusted to the contemporary human body size. But besides that, it’s exactly, almost exactly the same.

11:59
Gabriel Orozco
Well, it works well for the Noh theater.

12:02
Hiroshi Sugimoto
The Noh theater glass stage, optical quality glass, seems like it’s floating on top of the sea. I knew it's very dangerous to perform there, but that there's so many, so many performers, they don't care, a life and death situation—but it's worth risking their life.

12:27
Mami Kataoka
But also looking at how Aurélie Dupont danced on that stage, she knew
the size of the stage. Well, end of the stage. She can circle around, not exactly at the end of the corner.

12:42
Hiroshi Sugimoto
So close to the edge.

12:44
Gabriel Orozco
The measurements are precise?

12:44
Hiroshi Sugimoto
There's some different, small or large. But this is the quite, standard size of the Noh stage with performers’ sections. So Noh performers, they learn by the body how much they can move. So, trained players, no problem. But untrained players, I don’t guarantee.

13:11
Gabriel Orozco
Well, it looks very… perfect stage, with the ocean in the back and you have this very… Feels kind of intimate space, although it's open air, but there is some intimacy that I like. And this idea of platform, I think is also important because, I personally, I tried always to conceive the sculptural or the landscape experience as you are in a platform of action in which life is happening and you just provide this platform as an artist. The only thing you do sometimes as an artist is to provide a platform of exchange in the form of an object, but mostly when it's about time and space, it's not just an object, it’s what is around the object. So this house, and the beach, also is a platform. And what used to be the concave half sphere Observatory, I filled it with water, which creates a reflection of the sky, and when you are in this roof you are looking at the heavens in the water and you can swim on it.

14:22
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Oh.

14:23
Gabriel Orozco
So at night when everything is dark and you are in this round, half sphere swimming pool, it feels like you are floating in the space because you see the whole sky and everything. So it's very quiet. There is nothing around that area. Also, there is no city, really.

14:41
Hiroshi Sugimoto
You can be naked.

14:43
Gabriel Orozco
Yeah. Yes. I tried to, yes. Have you in your foundation here? Yeah, probably you do, sometimes… This tunnel is fantastic! You can walk… How, how long is this tunnel?

14:50
Hiroshi Sugimoto
70 meter.

14:59
Mami Kataoka
Tell us a little bit more about your park plan for Mexico.

15:02
Hiroshi Sugimoto
This is a government project.

15:06
Gabriel Orozco
Yes, this is a public park. It's a big, big park, which now is… it used to be a military base on one of these areas near by this park. And now the new president wants to expand the park to make it quite big now with the addition of a fourth section. So there used to be three sections: first one, then two, then… but now, it’s expanding into a bigger area for public green space. And there is already some infrastructure, but they used to be for military purposes. So we are converting these already existing buildings into cultural activities.

15:56
Hiroshi Sugimoto
[Is there] any concept to design this huge public park?

16:02
Gabriel Orozco
Well, yes, of course. I mean, I'm the coordinator, so I need to put together a big team. But this first section is more of a French style…oh, well, it is there now. As a park, it looks a little bit like the Luxembourg Gardens because it was made in the last phase of the 19th century. But in fact, Chapultepec, from Aztec times, it was this hill that was also a spring and it was very important for Moctezuma, Nezahualcoyotl, all the leaders. This was the spring water coming to the city, based on these Chapultepec hill. And that’s why it’s called Chapultepec Park. And then, after, it grows into an extended version in the 60s, and that is more Modernist style, more American, Brazilian style. Brazilian, I mean, Burle Marx, organicity, from a Brazilian version, let's say, combined with Modernist architecture. And then we have a section that is quite abandoned - there is no style, really, maybe a little bit like barbecue, American park. And then the new one is military style,

17:21
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Military style?

17:25
Gabriel Orozco
Yeah, I guess, it's mostly military style. It's very similar everywhere, I guess.

17:31
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Do you have to complete?

17:33
Gabriel Orozco
It's not that I have to complete… But we already started and we started before COVID came. So this was two years ago. We started to plan with the different designs for the whole general mobility, topography… We need to make plenty of studies about water sources because we have two springs, which is eight hundred hectares, it’s big and it's in the center of the city. I mean, it's like Hyde Park or is four times Central Park - and it's all Central Park. So this is a very important park for Mexico in the center of the city.

18:15
Mami Kataoka
And I was thinking about the museum as well as something similar to the garden, because all these parks and gardens, you have to not only artistically develop, but also you have to take care of these plants and cut the bamboo and also place this flower every morning. And this kind of taking care of these natural space, is something similar to how we need to operate the museums, because museums, normally, it starts in someone's collection or growing collection. But to maintain the energy of the museum, it has to be - kept, adding all these new elements. So otherwise it's become the dry garden.

19:08
Hiroshi Sugimoto
How do you choose the artist as a museum director?

19:13
Mami Kataoka
I think, yeah, I feel always it's a kind of microcosm of the whole world. So by entering through the contemporary museum, I want people to start feeling about, like, walking through the planet, the surface of the planet. So I try to get some sort of energy from what is happening in the world, and reflect on the problem. So you have to reach the energy of the world a little bit earlier than the actual time, so that when things comes, or the actual exhibition is made, the society is ready to accept the situation.

19:59
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Here, it’s starting as a museum as well. This is open to the public, but open to the artist as well. So especially, performing art. If you do some performing arts, you're welcome to do many, many more.

20:18
Gabriel Orozco
Thank you, oh you're inviting me. Thank you very much [laughter]. I can start, I’ll think about it.

20:23
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Two or… two years ago, Tino Sehgal was invited and then did a beautiful performance, but he… he's not willing to make any record, that's his policy. So there's no record. This year Christian Marclay has been invited, but he came here once and so he just looked around and banging everywhere… “What's the sounds of this building?” Long tunnels, he was banging around, and he liked that sound. So, uh, toward the end of this year, as the situation gets better, then he's coming.

21:01
Gabriel Orozco
So that is interesting, because not many artists work at the same time in open spaces and enclosed spaces. Nowadays, especially projects like this, what is architecture is not the same as landscape. And the concept of landscape architecture, to me, doesn't sound right. With nature, you don't do architecture, you do design if you want, or you do sculpture in an open field. You are forming mountains, and reliefs, is more like a sculpture. For architecture etymology, “arch,” archi-tecture, comes from an enclosure, when you do a roof or you enclose a space, then this architecture is, somehow. Very basic, what I'm saying. But there is something more about landscape. When you do a platform, when you do a fountain, when you do an open-air theater, it's not exactly architecture. It's more of a platform, a stage in the open field, like most of the spaces in Hiroshi’s Foundation. There it is, in between enclosed and outdoor, open and close spaces and the interaction is quite nice. It's a nice thread of walking and staying, shadow… Someone was telling me that the only thing you need to make a nice park is three things: silence, humidity and shade.

22:39
Hiroshi Sugimoto
I like this Foundation - the best time is after the rain, everything is wet and the rain stops, sometimes I'm alone, it's quiet, but many, many birds are singing and the stone, when it gets wet, that's the best. I usually recommend people to come when it's raining. Not when it’s sunny day. Today is a little too dry to me.

23:09
Mami Kataoka
I was remembering your painting from, was it two years ago in Tokyo - it was quite beautiful. Somewhere between Japanese kimono and Klimt-like painting that you were showing in Omotesandō. But how are some of the Japanese aesthetics been coming into your artistic practice?

23:36
Hiroshi Sugimoto
You have many series of a scroll, Japanese scrolls, which is my territory. but I am proud that you are using…

23:47
Gabriel Orozco
It’s interesting because Japan and Hiroshi’s work, it’s as much the territory of everybody. I mean, the seascapes of Hiroshi's is something… that's a landscape that you can relate to, no matter if you are Japanese or Mexican. There is some sense of things that we could say, they’re in Japanese originally, they’re from Japan, but they have been part of our culture since a very long time. So I have been living, I have lived in Japan for the last five years in Tokyo.

24:25
Hiroshi Sugimoto
You even have a driver's license. I’m impressed.

24:31
Gabriel Orozco
I just got my driver's license, which is a big, big triumph, I would say. And then this painting you're mentioning since before coming to Tokyo, to live in Tokyo, I have been quite interested in Japanese culture and Japanese aesthetics, Japanese painting at the same time, it’s true. You mentioned Klimt, Gustav Klimt has always, since I was a kid, been one of my favorite artists. This combination is part of my work in general. I like to combine Western culture with Indian culture, with Japanese, with all the things I'm interested in. I put them together. I don't consider myself a very stereotypical Mexican artist, but I try just to… living in Japan, I consider myself a Japanese artist, of course, and it's obvious I’m a very Japanese artist, I'm sure. But conversations with Hiroshi, with people I know since before coming to Tokyo, this has been always about many common things we like. And even in terms of architecture, I always claim that Modernist architecture is very much influenced by Japanese architecture. The essentials of Japanese architecture were transported to Modernist sense of space. Modular, repetition, opening and closing sequence of time, and painting was especially influenced by Japanese culture in the late 19th century. And somehow that trespasses towards the beginning of the 20th century. And still today there are so many connections between our most ancient forms of culture, even pre-Hispanic in Mexico. The Mayan connection with the Asian world and the Modernist and contemporary world is no exception. We are still living through all these layers, and Hiroshi is a good example of that. I don't know what do you think when you see my Japanese work, the same when I see your Japanese work or your Mexican landscapes?

26:42
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Well, I was I was kind of impressed from your scroll design. And the Japanese never can think about it, because your painting part is usually used to be used for the framing material. These obi patterns. So you turn it upside down, and it’s… it shocked me. Wow, this is a possible way, so I may try your style.

27:14
Gabriel Orozco
Then you can show me, teach me, a little bit of calligraphy, because it's true that I tried my hand in calligraphy with just black ink. But somehow since I was a kid, I was not very fond of the calligraphy or just ink. I love watercolor. I love Japanese painting, so I love to work with water. I'm not very much into oil painting. Even those paintings are tempera, which is egg tempera. We're using water. So I like the flatness of the water color. And the Japanese painting is in theory, very flat. But you have so many subtleties that I think I try to also express that in the scrolls, cutting up the embroidery.

28:06
Mami Kataoka
So, yeah, I find both of you have a lot in common. I think you are already finding that some parts are very common.

28:16
Hiroshi Sugimoto
I think Japanese aesthetics-wise, it’s hard to define what the Japanese aesthetics is. But to me, it's a sense of space. Sense of space is just a not just a physical space, but the sense of the space of the time, how the time passes through, the sense of space, you know, this one stone, what's the next stone to be? How far it should be? And then the third stone, the relationship between the stone, between stones and then time passing through this connection. In that case, it shows everywhere in Japanese history, like the Zen garden and architectural structure, how many pillars in between some spaces. So, and then also, as you said, Contemporary Modern architecture may be influenced by Japanese sense of space that started early 20th century.  Even Le Corbusier - simplicity in Europe never found simplicity till Modernism. Everything is decorative. Spanish is Spanish and French is French decor. So, here, everything is mostly pre-Modern things that I collect. So 20th century contemporary art or Modern art, I learned a lot, but it didn't influence me a lot. Learning contemporary art in the 20th century, I rediscovered before Modernism. So before modern times, 19th century, even before an ancient… my curiosity in space is being brought back to the ancient time. That guided me to the seascapes, you know, the ancient people. Shall we see the seascape? Same seascapes in this time as well? We changed around more, but only things never change. It's a seascape since the ancient people and modern contemporary people, that that's my sense of space and time. So that's something that we share today. We have a conversation.

30:52
Gabriel Orozco
It's also how you read the landscape. Oh, what do you…we just see what we understand. That is something I quote from Jorge Luis Borges, is when you see a forest and you don't know what type of trees they are, they are pines or eucalyptus or something. You just read it may be the same. But I wonder what a sailor will look at your seascapes. How he will read that ocean, or the clouds? You can see the clouds. There are many types of clouds… for someone who doesn't understand so much about the weather or clouds, they all look the same, or like the stars, they all look the same. But when you can differentiate the star from a planet if you know which one is which one… The ocean, I guess is similar.

31:46
Hiroshi Sugimoto
I developed that kind of sense. When I see, [I] face the sea, I can feel, well, the rain is coming or it's getting clear from this moment. It's, uh, it's quite… quite mysterious sense, that I can forecast, myself.

32:06
Gabriel Orozco
And I think also we are a sense, in a sense, we are like sponges, and I think Japan is a sponge. So it’s this sponge that can contain a lot of humidity from other cultures. They are very open for it traditionally, maybe because it's an island. And as an island, you are a kind of a sponge in the middle of the ocean. You get a lot of steam and humidity from other cultures and you are filled with those influences. And Japanese people are not against other cultures. It's just absorbing them. And then somehow they managed to incorporate them in their life and then to get in touch with the others. That is a quality I think, that I found interesting. I guess many countries are similar, but Japan is especially strong in this connection between the outside and the inside.

33:02
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Yeah, I'm getting old, but now I feel my my brain is getting spongy [laughter].

33:07
Mami Kataoka
This is a different problem. But I think, yeah, the thinking about the time that we spend in COVID and losing the sense of time and space, then we can stretch our time for thousand years or 5000 years, and thinking about this garden also to trying to imagine how this would look like after five thousand years, it would be quite interesting.

33:35
Hiroshi Sugimoto
It's remained as a ruin. Nobody knows who made this. My name, as its civilization, is gone. And then it's a new, new life. Maybe, maybe apes can be as developed as a human.

33:53
Gabriel Orozco
Cucarachas [cockroaches] - insects. They're gonna be the survivors. But it's true, the ruin aspect is very interesting because in Mexico we have so many ruins. And when I was making this project in the beach, I thought always, OK, if one day I cannot maintain this house because it's impossible for me or I’m not there, and it became a ruin and people visit as a ruin, just the construction, it’s fine. It will look like an old pyramid an old temple destroyed just some sediments, but this is still cultural… culturally interesting, because that is the landscape that you order for many people to enjoy it. So I like the idea of ruin.

34:39
Mami Kataoka
Thank you very much. I think sometime, someday, Hiroshi and Gabriel could find a collaborative project and to continue this dialogue, or you come again as a performer.

34:52
Gabriel Orozco
Yes, I will. Rehearsals are not yet there, but thank you very much for an invitation. Well, it is a pleasure. Thank you.

34:58
Mami Kataoka
Thank you very much.

34:59
Gabriel Orozco
Thank you.

35:00
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Thank you.