Phase of Nothingness–Cloth and Stone 1994

Nobuo Sekine made this mysterious wall hanging, titled "Phase of Nothingness–Cloth and Stone" using found materials. I look at this and I imagine Sekine stretching the canvas, preparing the surface with thick white paint. He’s got a clear idea in mind, but the process is all about testing and responding to what’s in front of him, right? It’s like the materials themselves are pushing back, resisting, maybe even suggesting new directions. I bet he was thinking a lot about weight, gravity and tension while making this. It’s hard to tell what the artist was thinking, but I imagine he was trying to say something about the relationship between the material world and the void. Does the nothingness refer to the white surface of the canvas, and the phase refer to the moment it is disrupted by the stone? The stone drags the canvas, and its radiating shape seems to emanate from that tension. It feels like the work of someone like Lucio Fontana and his slashed canvases. Ultimately, each artist adds their own voice to the ongoing conversation about what art can be, and how it can help us see the world in new ways.