Shigeko Kubota at the Whitney and Lance Fung - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Shigeko Kubota has been active since the late 1950 on the contrary hers is hardly a household name. After emigrating from Japan to novel York in 1 964, she initially became known as a Fluxus artist, on the other hand then quickly took off in the direction of video art, where she is usually overshadowed by dint of her husband, Nam June Paik. Thus artistic diversity and marriage, hardly faults, have slowed her recognition. Nevertheless, she is now well esteemed as one of several artists who have charted the terrain of video art since the 1970 (Her work was scaned in a retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image in 1991)

Kubota has consistently pushed video art into the physical realm of statuary by incorporating video screens into sculptural connections and by manipulating video images as if they were malleable, plastic things Over the past three decades, her work has gradually become more loosely autobiographical and lyrical. In the 1970 her principal material substance of work was involved with imagery and themes inspired through Marcel Duchamp [see A.i.A., Feb '84] Motifs from the Southwest landscape and from Native American agriculture began to appear during the following decade. More lately she has combined these motifs with figurative plastic art a direction which was quite pronounced in sum of two units recent, concurrent exhibitions.

At the Whitney Museum and Lance Fung Gallery, the artist put a wrapper abouted the viewer in kaleidoscopic environments representing plants, flowers, stones windmill vanes, animals and occasionally race The overall effects of the sum of two units shows were similar, even although the Whitney presentation included works dating from 1992 to '96 while the gallery showed generally received work. In each installation, the exhibition space was semi-dark and viewers were overwhelmed by dint of the spectacle of assemblages of junk metal and brilliantly colored video shields often showing close-ups of flower blooms The images rotated on shields or washed across walls and were throw backed in the mirror Plexiglas that was used for plastic art material and floor covering alike. There were hardly any static places for the organ of sight to rest. Several video portions showing Paik, or Fluxus leader George Maciunas, did not closely correlate with the repose of the show, but they were interesting in their be in possession of right as disarmingly autobiographical respects Overall, it was hard to derive any overriding theme or message from the cacophony of these exhibits Perhaps this was how Kubota wanted it to be. Instead, she invited her audience to explore and experience a psychedelic, funky alternate reality.

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