Kishio Suga - Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, NL, 2025

Mono-Ha is a Japanese art movement that emerged in response to commercial art of the USA in the 60s. Rejecting the traditional definition of a work of art, the movement embraed natural and industrial materials in a (mostly) unaltered state. Kishio Suga was one of the pioneers of this movement, and the retrospective exhibition of his career at the Cobra Museum had a wide range of his works: sketches, small pieces, full-room installations. Below are some notes I took in response to the exhibition.

similar to Arte Povera (Italian art movement using "poor" materials)

low intervention, leaving objects and presenting them as they are

mono = thing

Mono-ha = School of Things

exploring the relationship of materials to each other

when you introduce a person, it changes the relationship of the materials to the person. The interaction becomes something to perceive

expression is a form of living. finding the way objects want to express themselves

creating space for reflection, an invitation to silence

what boundaries do we impose on objects?

what happens if we just let things be? - ties into

letting materials speak in their own language

meaning is created by the situation in which the object exists, the context which we create for it

using natural materials like wood and stone was a rejection of rapid industrialization and postwar modernity

you can question if the compositions are "too simple" - does it count as art? is it too simple? what does it mean? But I personaly like the piees. They bring me a sense of calm, I find myself lost admiring their natural textures, considering how they relate to each other and flow in their compositions. Is that not enough? Does it need to have a "deeper meaning"? Is how the work makes people feel not enough?

Broken circle. From ‘ellips’ series. Acrylic is n varnished paper. FOR SALE. DM: [email protected]

#minimalart #minimalartforsale #modernminimalistart #artepovera

#robertryman #abstractlounge #nonobjectiveart #kolajmagazine #artcollecting #reductiveart #curatedartwork#artcollecting #abstractart #interiorart #atolty #minimalabstraction #RecycledArt #UpcycledCreations #artmadeontrash #EcoArt #SustainableArt#RepurposedMaterials

#dansaekhwaart

ArtWithAStory #Vintage

Keiji Uematsu, “Wave Motion I” (1) & (2), 1976

“To create a work in which the lack of a single element will cause the entire structure – the invisible existences of things and their relationships – to collapse like a cosmos.” 

Keiji Uematsu (b. 1947, Kobe, Japan) is a conceptual artist associated with the post-war Japanese art movement, Mono-ha. Over a nearly five decades-long career, Uematsu has developed a highly cohesive body of work that has consistently sought to make visible the invisible relationships between objects and the spaces they inhabit. In 1972, he wrote: ‘What I want to do is to make visible existence, visible connections and visible relations appear more clearly. And to cause non-visible existence, non-visible connections and non-visible relations to appear. And to cause visible existence, visible connections and visible relations not to appear’. The ideas of ‘de-familiarising’ space and focusing our attention on the natural forces of gravity, tension, and material attraction, whether through photography, drawing or sculptural installation, underpin his entire practice. 

Personalità di spicco di Mono-ha, gruppo artistico nato alla fine degli anni Sessanta, Kishio Suga inizia a esporre le sue opere in un contesto di grande fermento culturale per il Giappone, così come a livello internazionale, con la nascita di movimenti come la Post-Minimal Art e la Land Art negli Stati Uniti e l’Arte Povera in Italia.Nel 1978 l’artista viene invitato a rappresentare il suo paese alla Biennale di Venezia, mostrando in Occidente il suo linguaggio che unisce una relazione profonda con la natura a una ricerca sui materiali e sullo spazio. I lavori di Suga si configurano come interventi temporanei che hanno la durata della mostra, site-specific nello spazio e nel tempo. Il lavoro di Suga si presenta come un paesaggio costituito da elementi organici e industriali – come ferro, zinco, legno, pietre e paraffina – spesso ricercati in loco.