SINGAPORE – The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is presenting South-east Asia’s first major survey of acclaimed Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, best known for his philosophical photographic experiments.

The 78-year-old’s show, on till Oct 4, is a dark space structured in the form of a mandala and titled after the Buddhist mantra Form Is Emptiness. Here are five works that still the mind, and query: Does contemporary art always have to to be disruptive and loud?

While Sugimoto in general prefers to understate, this 4.5m-high wall of 288 calligraphic characters makes no qualms about its intention to envelop, brought home by the curators’ decision to lay the tiles out along a curved wall.

The characters are from Buddhist text The Heart Sutra and include the exhibition’s title Se Ji Shi Kong, Form Is Emptiness, six columns from the right.

Sugimoto wrote all the characters on photographic paper in near darkness with a brush dipped in fixer, an invisible chemical solution. Not able to see what he had written, this was an uncertain process that necessitated great focus and faith in his own calligraphic flow.

The act can be viewed through the lens of perfor...