Phase No. 10, 1968 / 2012
plywood, wood, FRP, lacquer
180 x 220 x 60cm

Phase No. 4 , 1968
plywood, wood, lacquer, 220 x 120 x 90cm
installation view, Tricks and Vision, Tokyo Gallery, 1968

installation view, Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, February 25 – April 14, 2012

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Phase—Sponge, 1968
steel plate, sponge, 130 x 120 x 120 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art, Nagaoka
installation view, 5th Nagaoka Contemporary Art Museum Prize (first prize), Seibu Department Store, Tokyo, November 16 – 27, 1968

Phase—Sponge, 1968
steel plate, sponge, 130 x 120 x 120 cm
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

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Phases of Nothingness—Oilclay, 1969
production shot

Phase of Nothingness—Oilclay, 1969
oilclay, dimensions variable
installation view, Tokyo Gallery, April 18 – May 2, 1969

Michael Blackwood, Japan—The New Art, 1970
still from color film, 27 minutes.
© Michael Blackwood Productions Inc.

Phase of Nothingness—Oilclay, 1969
oilclay, dimensions variable
installation view, Tokyo Gallery, April 18 – May 2, 1969

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Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969 / 2012
steel, lacquer, water, 30 x 220 x 160, 120 x 120 x 120 cm
installation view, Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, February 25 – April 14, 2012

Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969
steel, lacquer, water, 30 x 220 x 160cm, 120 x 120 x 120cm
installation view, 9th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, May 10-30, 1969

Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969
steel, lacquer, water, 30 x 220 x 160cm, 120 x 120 x 120cm
installation view, 9th Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, May 10-30, 1969

Phase of Nothingness—Water, 1969 / 2012
steel, lacquer, water, 30 x 220 x 160, 120 x 120 x 120 cm
installation view, Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, February 25 – April 14, 2012

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Phase of Nothingness, 1970
marble, stainless steel, 450 x 420 x 130 cm
installation view, Japanese Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale, June 22 – October 20, 1970

Phase of Nothingness, 1969 / 2012
granite, stainless steel, 450 x 420 x 130 cm
installation view, Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles, February 25 – April 14, 2012

Phase of Nothingness, 1970
marble, stainless steel, 450 x 420 x 130 cm
installation view, Japanese Pavilion, 35th Venice Biennale, June 22 – October 20, 1970

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Stone and Neon, 1970 / 2011
stone, Fluorescent light, Plastic, 58 x 48 x 94, 67 x 61 x 96, 58 x 57 x 96 cm
installation view, Nobuo Sekine “RE-CREATIONS 1970 / 2011,” Kamakura Gallery, Kamakura, September 3 – October 23, 2011

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Phase of Nothingness—Black, No. 29, 1977
fibre-reinforced plastic, 57 x 54 x 59, 53 x 54 x 54, 54 x 53 x 43 cm

Ring of Scenery, 1982
black granite, 300 x 60 (diameter) cm
College of Industrial Technology, Nihon University

all images courtesy the artist (unless otherwise stated) 

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Sometimes I like to torture myself with drooling over worthwhile exhibitions in places where I am not, like this large survey of Japanese artist NOBUO SEKINE at Blum and Poe in the city of Los Angeles.

NOBUO SEKINE’s work is primarily concerned with the relationship between man and material. Belonging to the Mono-ha or School of Things movement in Tokyo in the late 1960s,  SEKINE uses natural and industrial materials such as stone, soil, wood and steel plates to unsettle the boundaries between art and nature, and to point out the mediating role of the human body in one’s perception of the world. Thanks to his penchant for illusionism, NOBUO SEKINE expands the sculptural process with some mathematical overtone of ‘twisting, streching, condensing until it is transformed into another’ in order to simply let the world as it is reveal itself.

➝ NOBUO SEKINE at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles is on view until February 15, 2014. Additionally I really recommend to browse the great website of NOBUO SEKINE.

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NOBUO SEKINE was born in Saitama, Japan, in 1942, and currently lives and works in Tokyo and Los Angeles. He received a BFA in oil painting at Tama Art University, Tokyo, in 1968. Following his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1970, he had solo exhibitions in Copenhagen, Genova, Milan, Tokyo, and Nagoya. From 1978 to 1979, Phase of Nothingness—Black was the subject of a solo exhibition that toured from the Künsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany, to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; the Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands; and the Henie-Onstad Art Centre, Høvikodden, Norway. He was recently the subject of an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art. His work has also been included in important surveys, such as Prima Materia, Punta della Dogana, Venice, Italy, 2013; Parallel Views: Italian and Japanese Art from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, The Warehouse, Dallas, Texas, 2013; Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012; Reconsidering Mono-ha, National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2005;Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky, Yokohama Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1994; and Japon des Avant Gardes 1910–1970, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1986.