The dry landscape garden at the Ryōan-ji Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, inspired artists from the 1950s onward. For avant-garde artists like John Cage and Takahiko Iimura, the garden became a focus for artistic interrogations of random chance, mindfulness, and perception.

For Japanese printmakers Saitō Kiyoshi, Sekino Junichirō, and Ray Morimura, the garden’s minimalist geometry lent itself to works rooted in pure modernist abstraction, which downplayed any religious or philosophical content. The exhibition features a recording of a composition by John Cage performed by students from Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music.

Organized by Kevin R.E. Greenwood, Joan L. Danforth Curator of Asian Art.