history: voices of mono-ha

Nobuo Sekine, Phase-Mother Earth, 1968

Mono-ha refers to a group of artists who were active from the late 60s. to early 70.s using both natural and man-made materials in their works. The aim of Mono-ha artists was simply to bring mono-things in an unaltered state, which had previously been nothing more than components of artworks to the attention of the viewers. Usually translated rather awkwardly as school of things, which is misleading since Mono-ha works were as much about the space and the interdependent relationships between things and space surrounding them. The name Mono-ha is actually more of a label applied to the fairly loose group of artists. Ideologies were not necessarily shared by all members of Mono-ha, so it was not a coordinated movement as such. Roughly speaking, Mono-ha is thought of as centring around Nobuo Sekine, Lee Ufan, Katsuro Yoshida, Susumu Koshimizu, Koji Enokura, Kishio Suga, Noboru Takayama and Katsuhiko Narita. The emergence of Mono-ha has its roots in many social, political and cultural factors of the 60s. and to trace its origins in detail is a complicated matter. However, the moment that is most often viewed as Mono-ha’s starting point came in October 1968 with Sekine’s creation of the work Phase – Mother Earth in Kobe’s Sumarikyu Park for the First Open Air Contemporary Sculpture Exhibition. The work consisted of a hole dug into the ground, 2.7 metres deep and 2.2 metres in diameter, with the excavated earth compacted into a cylinder of exactly the same dimensions. continue reading.  

Kishio Suga, Limitless Situation (Window), 1970, installation view at the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.

Although it marked a major turning point in Japanese postwar art history, the work of the Mono-ha artists remains surprisingly unknown. The exhibition Reconsidering Mono-ha held at the National Museum of Art, Osaka (2005) and What is Mono-ha, held at Beijing Tokyo Art Projects in 2007 were the last efforts to address Mono-ha’s role in the history of Japanese contemporary art. Recently Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo has been trying to revive it presenting works of its prominent member, Kishio Suga. The exhibition is composed of photographs of archival outdoor installations and more recent works and it has been accompanied by the river-long interview with the artist. Outside Japan Hirshhorn Museum organized Requiem for the Sun: The art of Mono-ha, exhibition at Blum & Poe gallery in L.A. which follows Lee Ufan, probably the artist the most associated with the group and group retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum last summer. So it looks like Mono-ha is regaining its place in world art history next to American Minimalism and Italian Arte Povera.