For the first time, I heard of “Mono-ha” at the “Shanghai Expo Prints Exhibition” curated by Hong Xin eight years ago. It exhibited four conceptual silk-screen manuscripts of Nobuo SEKINE.
In 1968, the 26-year-old Nobuo SEKINE created “Phase-Mother Earth” at the “First Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition” in Suma Palace Park, Kobe, Japan. Based on the concept of Chinese landscapes, Sekine created the piece by digging a cylindrical pit 2.7 meters deep and 2.2 meters wide on the park grounds, then molding the excavated soil into an enormous cylinder of the same dimensions and installing it next to the pit. The pillar standing on the ground formed a bold contrast to the emptiness of the hole. This piece has become an opportunity for the “Mono-ha”.
The works of “Mono-ha” artists usually use unprocessed natural materials such as wood, stone and soil to reduce the artificial traces of the pieces. While paying attention to the “relationship” between objects, they also incorporate “space” into the narrative factors. The focus of the discussion is often invisible to the subtle “connections” between objects. According to this, the minimum performance is used to reveal the way the natural world exists and people have the opportunity to re-recognize the “reality” of the world.