Phase - Mother Earth 2008

Nobuo Sekine made "Phase - Mother Earth" by digging a cylindrical hole in the ground and reshaping the displaced earth into a column of the same dimensions. I love how the rawness of the materials and the simplicity of the concept really lets you connect with the process. The texture of the earth, the color of the soil, and the sheer physicality of the work, it's all so immediate. Look at the layers of earth in the column, they are like rings on a tree, it’s evidence of the time it took to build, but also like evidence of time on earth. It’s like the artist wanted to make visible the very stuff of the earth. I can’t help but think of Robert Smithson’s "Spiral Jetty", which also embraces the earth as a material, but also as a collaborator. Art is an ongoing conversation, isn't it? Where meaning is always shifting.