Exhibition Title｜DECODE: Events & Materials – The Work of Art in The Age Post-Industrial Society
Organizers｜The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Tama Art University
Exhibition Dates｜ Sep. 14 – Nov. 4, 2019, 10:00 – 17:30
Closed on Mon｜ Sep. 16, Sep. 23, Oct. 14, Nov. 4
Venue｜The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama | 9 Chome-30-1 Tokiwa, Urawa Ward, Saitama, Japan
Link｜ Exhibition Page, Access
The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and Tama Art University has co-organized the exhibition “DECODE: Events & Materials – The Work of Art in the Age of Post-Industrial Society”, opening on the 14th of this month. At the opening, one of the exhibiting artists Koshimizu Susumu, will lead an art talk that revolves around the work Phase-Mother Earth. The Museum of Modern Art in Saitama, Japan, was established to raise awareness on modern art in Japan and artists related to the prefecture of Saitama; moreover, the museum has also featured the modern art of Europe, America, Asia, and other foreign nations.
With its backdrop set in the late 1960s to 70s, the exhibition explores the development of modern art in Japan, specifically the movement Mono-ha that has been internationally recognized and studied extensively in recent years; furthermore, the curatorial will center on the work Phase-Mother Earth by Mono-ha’s pioneering artist Sekine Nobuo and the aftermath of its composition. Accompanied by an immense collection of photographs, videos and documents, the exhibition appears in the form of a Documenta, analyzing and connecting all the dots of art history to present the network of Art of Post-Industrial Society that rose from the unique circumstance of Post-war Japan.
We are deeply pleased with the news of Sekine’s works exhibiting at The Museum of Modern Art in Saitama. Asia Art Center has been committed to the research and promotion of post-war Asian art of Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and even further expanded our scope towards Japan to visualize a more complete historic context. In January this year, Taipei I presented “Phase of Nothingness-Skin: Sekine Nobuo Solo exhibition” to embark on the examination of post-war Japanese art; Subsequently, “Substance and Motion: Haraguchi Noriyuki Taiwan Premiere Exhibition” was presented in May as a thematic sequence, which continued on reviewing the relationship between Mono-ha and post-war Asian art.
Sekine Nobuo（1942-2019 ）
Sekine Nobuo was born in 1942 in Saitama prefecture, Japan. He received B.F.A in Painting at Tama Art University in 1968, where he studied under artists Yoshishige Saito and Jiro Takamatsu. Since graduation, he has worked actively as the central figure of Mono-ha in international exhibitions. Mono-ha, literally translated as the “School of Things”, was a pivotal art movement in the formation of postwar Japanese modern art. In 1968, Sekine Nobuo composed the work Phase-Mother Earth, widely considered as marking the beginning of the movement, and is one of the most iconic artworks of this period in Japan that is influential to the future developments of earth, installation, and minimalist art in Asia. Sekine Nobuo’s artistic experimentations manifest the tranquility of Zen philosophy through the theories of topology (study of the properties of space). By disposing matters to continuous change in form while retaining its natural quality, he seeks to unveil the intrinsic quality of matters through varying perspectives, which in turn questions interrelation between the matters and audience as the change takes place. His compositions range from large-scale earthwork, installation of natural and industrial materials, space-specific life-size sculpture, and flat-surface works that explore the materiality of painting media.