PAF012Nobuo Sekine, Phase of Nothingness - Stone Stack, 1970-2025

First imagined as a small maquette for an exhibition in Italy in 1970 and proposed but never realized as a public monument for Rome in 1971, Phase of Nothingness–Stone Stack is a towering arc of suspended weight and silent force. Recalling stone stacks commonly created by hikers and climbers in alpine settings around the world, the work is composed of seven naturally rounded boulders sitting atop one another and appearing as if impossibly frozen at its tipping point, creating what fellow Mono-ha artist and writer Lee Ufan referred to as an “uncanny pause” in time. In close collaboration with the artist’s estate, the Powder Art Foundation has realized the work at the monumental scale Sekine intended, creating a new landmark on a civic scale on a prominent knoll in the heart of Powder Mountain. The sheer sense of mass and gravity of the boulders creates a tension that is both physical and perceptual.

Sekine wrote and spoke often about the concept of “phase”—referring not to temporal states, but to the interval or relation between things. For Sekine, the notion of phase was deeply rooted in his study of mathematics and topology. Rather than viewing form as fixed, he approached it as a mutable condition: a set of relations unfolding in space and time. Topology, the study of continuous transformation, allowed Sekine to think beyond static geometry toward a kind of fluid relationality. In this work, phase exists not in the stones themselves but in the space and force that binds them—the arc of tension, gravity, and balance that vibrates with quiet presence. Sekine likened his practice to “thinking through matter”. He sought not expression but connection—with nature, space, and perception. His dynamic physical propositions transcend traditional sculpture to bring form, void, and relation briefly—and impossibly—into balance.