At the Maison de la Culture du Japan, the edge and the nature of the Mono-Ha-Liberation

How, you don’t know the Mono Ha movement? The exhibition « The ecology of things », at the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris, is undoubtedly the opportunity to (re) discover this artistic current, born in Japan in the late 1960s. There is no question of the star Lee Ufanborn in 1936 in Korea-then occupied by Japan-the most famous artist of the Mono-Ha movement (« the school of things » in Japanese). Rather, the exhibition proposes to rekindle the memory of this current with less known figures and to probe its echo in posterior generations. «  »Mono-ha, it was a group of artists who used almost the raw state of natural or industrial materials (stone, earth, wood, paper, cotton, (…) sponges, electric bulbs, neon tubes, etc.) which they simply juxtaposed in temporary and contingent arrangements« Wrote Lee Ufan in 1973.

Born after 1968 in the disenchantment of post-war modernity, imbued with Zen philosophy-a branch of Buddhism based on meditation and the search for enlightenment-Mono-ha was therefore interested in all things, but especially in their meetings, their connection. The works bear witness to particular attention to the landscapes and the elements