| SHIGEKO KUBOTA
My Life With Nam June Paik
Video Sculptures and Installation
Maya Stendhal Gallery
September 6 – October 20, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 6, 6pm-9pm
Maya Stendhal Gallery is pleased to present a solo show of pioneering
video sculptor and multimedia artist Shigeko Kubota titled
My Life With Nam June Paik, which runs from
September 6 through October 20, 2007. As one of the first artists to explore
the aesthetic, emotive, and technological properties of video, Kubota
is largely responsible for video’s acceptance as a legitimate art
form. Her early video sculptures and performances broke new ground for
women artists during the feminist art movement of the late 1960’s
and 1970’s. On view are key works, some never before exhibited,
which disclose Kubota’s important contributions to contemporary
art practice. At the same time, these works highlight the artist’s
special relationship with husband and collaborator Nam June Paik
(1932-2006).
The autobiographical is a constant theme throughout Kubota’s impressive
body of work. She unites traditional sculpture with the electronic image
to convey the personal, spiritual, and creative aspects that motivate
her in life and in art.
Conceived of as one video environment, the exhibition presents a landscape
of Kubota’s magical video sculptures, which at once disorients and
transfixes the viewer. It is a dreamland filled with massive crystalline
mirror growths, dynamic metal sculptures, and video screen projections
that pulsate colorfully like living organisms. Kubota describes the sculptures
as a means of communication with another world.
Jonas Mekas, Kubota’s longtime friend and collaborator,
encapsulates the essence of this monumental show:
“So it’s time that we see Shigeko Kubota as an artist,
a supreme artist in the art she was so crucial in assisting. Her video/electronic
sculptures have been so rarely seen in public. Their modernity, their
energy, their impact upon one’s entire sensory and mental body is
electrifying. I can only try to imagine, and it’s not so easy to
do, Shigeko Kubota’s contribution to her life’s friend, Nam
June Paik. It must have been immense.”
The show presents two new, larger than life sculptures that will be unveiled
to the public for the first time. Nam June Paik I
(2007) assumes a ghost-like form. Composed of metal piping, the work abstractly
suggests a human figure sitting on a mesh, orb-like base. The figure comes
to life as recent images of Kubota and Paik in Miami play on monitors
stationed at the head, torso, hands, and knees. A beautiful musical piece
that Paik composed when he was thirteen emanates from the work, lending
an otherworldly air to this eccentric and surprising environment. The
imposing Buddha-like figure of Nam June Paik II
(2007) stretches out his arms, claiming control over this video underworld.
He is Paik reincarnated – simultaneously wearing suspenders and
a belt to indicate the eccentric personality for which he was known. In
one hand he holds a violin, the instrument he smashed in his memorable
performance One for Violin Solo. In the other
hand is a Buddha head, referencing his well-known work TV-Buddha.
One senses that the connection between Kubota and Paik remains strong
as ever with this piece. Touching footage of the couple shot over the
years plays on 15 monitors placed throughout the torso, arms, and head.
Created in memory of Paik, these intimate works symbolize his enduring
presence as a husband and artist.
Born in 1937 in Niigata, Japan, Shigeko Kubota studied sculpture in her
native country before moving to New York City in 1964 where she met George
Maciunas, the influential founder of the Fluxus art movement.
She became an active figure, embracing the movement’s collaborative
and experimental approach to artistic practice. Fluxus introduced her
to one of the group’s core members Nam June Paik,
and they eventually married in 1977. The radical ideas and iconic imagery
put forth by artist Marcel Duchamp also motivated Kubota
in theory and practice. These influences, grounded in avant-garde beliefs,
provided Kubota with the creative push needed to break free from art’s
restrictive boundaries, and in 1970, she began using video.
Shigeko Kubota has exhibited at major art museums all over the world including
the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Solomon
R. Guggenheim Museum, and the New Museum of Contemporary
Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in
Chicago, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam,
and the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. She
held artist residencies at the Art Institute of Chicago
and Brown University, and taught Video Art at the School
of Visual Arts in New York. She received the DAAD Fellowship
in Berlin, Germany, and awards and grants from the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, Rockefeller Foundation, American Film Institute, New
York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts,
and the National Endowment for the Arts. Shigeko Kubota
lives and works in New York City.
A full-page color catalogue of the exhibition will be available upon request.
For further information please contact:
Maya Stendhal Gallery | 545 West 20th St. | New York, NY 10011
T 212.366.1549 | F 347.287.6775 |
www.mayastendhalgallery.com |
www.jonasmekas.com
EMAIL info@mayastendhalgallery.com
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