Mono-ha

also: School of Things · もの派

movement c. 1968-1975 Japan

Mono-ha ('school of things') coalesced in Tokyo around 1968 around Tama Art University, led by the sculptor Nobuo Sekine and the Korean-born artist and theorist Lee Ufan. Rejecting representation, illusion, and even the crafted object, its Japanese and Korean members worked with raw materials - stone, steel plate, glass, timber, cotton, paper, water - presented largely unaltered and often in ephemeral arrangements. The work lies less in the things themselves than in the encounter between them and the space around them: a stone cracked down onto a pane of glass, a cylinder of earth reinserted beside its own hole. Sekine's Phase - Mother Earth (1968) is usually taken as the movement's founding gesture. Through exhibitions and Lee Ufan's criticism, Mono-ha became one of the most influential postwar Asian art movements, and its refusal of making echoed far beyond Japan.

Artist: Nobuo Sekine Title: Phase—Mother Earth Year of production: 1968 Media: Earth, cement Dimensions: Cylinder: 220 x 270 (diameter) cm,
Artist: Nobuo Sekine Title: Phase—Mother Earth Year of production: 1968 Media: Earth, cement Dimensions: Cylinder: 220 x 270 (diameter) cm, CC BY-SA 4.0 (credit: Nobuo Sekine) · source

Defining characteristics

  • Raw, minimally altered materials - stone, steel, glass, wood, cotton, water - set down as found
  • Arrangements rather than modeled sculptures: the relation between materials is the work
  • The surrounding space, floor, and site act as active elements of the piece
  • Ephemeral, installational presentation, often built on site and dismantled after display
  • No illusion, narrative, or virtuoso craft; the hand of the artist is deliberately suppressed

Key figures

  • Nobuo Sekine (1942-2019) — Sculptor whose Phase - Mother Earth (1968) is the movement's founding gesture
  • Lee Ufan (b. 1936) — Korean-born theorist and artist whose materials-and-perception works defined Mono-ha
  • Kishio Suga (b. 1944) — Sculptor of staged raw materials, from Law of Situation (1971) to later 'activation' installations
  • Kōji Enokura (1942-1995) — Artist whose cloth, wood, and stain interventions traced the tension between body and material
  • Susumu Koshimizu (b. 1944) — Sculptor investigating material, surface, and space (From Surface to Surface)

Example works

  • Phase—Mother Earth — Nobuo Sekine (1968)
  • Relatum (formerly Phenomena and Perception B) — Lee Ufan (1969)
  • Law of Situation — Kishio Suga (1971)

Sources

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