When Kunié Sugiura set out to make life-size photograms of human subjects, she put a new spin on what it means to be “an artist’s artist.” A photogram is a direct image that is made on photosensitive paper without the use of a camera. Typically, small objects are displayed. Sugiura went larger and bolder. She asked other artists to pose, including Joan Jonas, Bill T. Jones, Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama and Jasper Johns.
Beginning in 1999, working in enclosures that she sheathed in black plastic to reduce reflections, she made some photograms into full-length portraits, in four-panel composites that measured over six feet high.
“I happened to know Jasper, so I called and asked him, and he said, ‘Next spring,’” Sugiura recalled in March, when I visited her apartment and studio in New York’s Chinatown. She was preparing to ship a few laggard works to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for her first American retrospective exhibition, “Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting,” on view through Sept. 14.
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