Untitled 1971

Nobuo Sekine made this sculpture out of a rock, sometime during his career. It's like he saw two forms in one, a dark, craggy, mossy form and a smooth, light, blank form, almost like an inside and an outside, and decided to tease that out. It feels really physical. You can almost feel the weight of the dark part, its rough texture and the cool smoothness of the light part. The way he’s cut into the stone is so precise and clean, it’s almost like he’s peeled away the layers. Look at the way the light catches on the inside surface, how it curves and reflects. You can see every mark, every little imperfection in the stone. Sekine's work, especially his early pieces, are a conversation with folks like Robert Smithson, who was all about pulling the earth apart and putting it back together in new ways. It's like they're saying, "Hey, nature's already got the best ideas; we're just here to show you how to look at them differently."