Shigeko Kubota has been active since the late 1950 moreover hers is hardly a household name.

Shigeko Kubota has been active since the late 1950 moreover hers is hardly a household name. After emigrating from Japan to recent York in 1 964, she initially became known as a Fluxus artist, on the contrary 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 honored as one of several artists who have charted the terrain of video art since the 1970 (Her work was scrutinizeed in a retrospective at the American Museum of the Moving Image in 1991)

Kubota has consistently pushed video art into the physical realm of cut by incorporating video screens into sculptural words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings and by manipulating video images as if they were malleable, plastic purposes Over the past three decades, her work has gradually become more loosely autobiographical and lyrical. In the 1970 her principal corpse of work was involved with imagery and themes inspired by way of Marcel Duchamp [see A.i.A., Feb '84] Motifs from the Southwest landscape and from Native American refinement began to appear during the following decade. More freshly she has combined these motifs with figurative statuary a direction which was quite pronounced in couple recent, concurrent exhibitions.

At the Whitney Museum and Lance Fung Gallery, the artist covered the viewer in kaleidoscopic environments representing plants, flowers, distaffs windmill vanes, animals and occasionally folks The overall effects of the couple shows were similar, even granting the Whitney presentation included works dating from 1992 to '96 while the gallery showed present work. In each installation, the exhibition space was semi-dark and viewers were overwhelmed from 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 ruminateed in the mirror Plexiglas that was used for carved work material and floor covering alike. There were hardly any static places for the estimate to rest. Several video portions showing Paik, or Fluxus leader George Maciunas, did not closely correlate with the stop of the show, but they were interesting in their be in possession of right as disarmingly autobiographical intimations Overall, it was hard to derive any overriding theme or message from the cacophony of these displays 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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