Kunié Sugiura’s Reading the Rooms at Moskowitz Bayse

Kunié Sugiura: X-Ray Island at Moskowitz Bayse offers a concise overview of the artist’s six-decade practice, bringing together works that explore the boundaries of photography through X-rays, photograms and shifts in scale. Born in Japan in 1942 and based in New York since the late 1960s, Sugiura has developed a distinctive approach that moves between abstraction and documentation, often revealing what sits just beyond ordinary perception. The exhibition traces these ideas across works that range from enlarged natural forms to fragmented studies of the body, consistently balancing distortion with a sense of clarity and light. [Read on]

The works on view move between pieces such as Beach 2 (1971), where grains of sand are enlarged into an almost unrecognisable landscape, and Vertebra (2021), a grid of spinal X-rays paired with coloured panels that subtly reads as a self-portrait following illness. Across the exhibition, fragmented bodies, organic forms and urban references sit alongside one another, from delicate floral silhouettes to unsettling composite X-ray figures. Sugiura’s practice consistently balances beauty with distortion, pairing monochrome X-ray imagery with colour to contrast mortality with light and hope.

The exhibition moves between works like Beach 2 (1971), where grains of sand become an almost unrecognisable landscape, and Vertebra (2021), a grid of spinal X-rays paired with coloured panels that subtly reads as a self-portrait following illness. Across the show, fragmented bodies, organic forms and urban references sit alongside one another, from delicate floral silhouettes to unsettling composite X-ray figures. Sugiura’s work consistently balances beauty with distortion, pairing monochrome X-ray imagery with colour to contrast mortality with light and hope.

Read Jody Zellen’s full review on What’s On Los Angeles

→ More exhibitions and events in London, Berlin, New York, and Los Angeles

For more art and travel inspiration, reviews or guides browse through our features, download the ArtRabbit App for iPhone or Android, or subscribe to one of our city-specific newsletters. You can also follow us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.