A gallery just above the Han River in Seoul is showcasing some 30 works by Nobuo Sekine. He represented Japan in the 1970 Venice Biennale and later founded the Environment Art Studio and introduced the "Mono-ha" or "object school" of art.

The focus of Mono-ha is on expressing the intrinsic properties of a medium to diffuse the boundary between the medium and the finished works.

Sekine's works are divided into phases, the first being "Phase-Earth" and the most recent being "Phase-Painting", which began in 1987. The works on display are from the past 30 years.

While he is best-known for outdoor pieces which stand 20 meters or higher at times, the works on display at this gallery are paintings and smaller sculptures. The pieces are created with traditional Japanese paper and coated with gold foil.

Sekine said he chose to use gold foil as it contains a certain delicateness, in line with the Mono-school's theme of capturing and showing the essence of a medium. On the first day of the exhibition, visitors got a chance to listen to Sekine's interpretation of his works and about being an artist.

Moving further south in the city, another gallery is displaying pieces by contemporary Japanese artists. The exhibits cross many genres from photography to sculpture. While it is designed to speed up the gallery's globalization, the pieces are distinctly Japanese.

According to the gallery's curator, collectors in the neighboring country tend to take more risks than those here, providing support for up-and-coming artists. And that leads to active distribution of various artworks from prestigious galleries to alternative spaces.

Arirang News