Nobuo Sekine

Nobuo Sekine

Born 1942 in Omiya, Saitama, Japan, he graduated from the Graduate School of Oil Painting at Tama Art University in 1968, and was a representative artist of the Mono-ha art movement that swept the Japanese art world from the late 1960s to the 1970s. In 1970, he represented Japan at the International Biennale of Venice, where he exhibited a work entitled 'Sora Soso' (Phase of the Sky), in which he placed natural stones on top of stainless steel pillars. In 1973, he established the Environmental Art Research Institute Ltd. He participated in the 'Century' exhibition at the Tate Modern Gallery, UK, as a representative artist of Tokyo in the period 1969-1973, and continued to work actively in Japan and abroad.

2019 Passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 76.
1986 “Japan of Avant-garde Art” Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France.
1986 “Mono-ha Exhibition” Kamakura Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
1981 “The Turning Point of Contemporary Art in the 1960s” The National Museum of Modern, Tokyo, Japan.
1979 Hennii Onstad Museum, Oslo, Norway.
1978 Cresthalle Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf, Germany.
1974 “11th Tokyo Biennale Exhibition” Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan.
1970 “World Exposition Museum Exhibition” Osaka, Japan.
1969 1st International Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition, Hakone Mori Museum, Hakone, Japan
1969 6th Biennale des Youth, Paris, France.
1968 “OOXPLAN” Muramatsu Gallery, Tokyo, Japan.
1968 “1st Kobe Suma Detached Palace Park Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition” Hyogo, Japan

Message From The Artist

The world is a zone of mystery that neither increases nor decreases. When we deepen our awareness of this place that neither increases nor decreases, we will realize the emptiness of the modern concept of creation. And the act that one can do is to look at the phase change. Then why transform the phase? It is because people want to feel a zone of mystery that neither increases nor decreases, in order to reach a state of being similar to what Zen practitioners call "enlightenment”.