This Mother’s Day, adopt a plant on the High Line as a sustainable gift for whoever has kept you nourished and loved.
Shigeko Kubota
Rock Video: Cherry Blossom
High Line Channel 22, Seating Steps, on the High Line at West 22nd Street
March 13 – April 20, 2014
6:00 PM to 11:00 PM
A prominent member of the international Fluxus art movement of the 1960s, Shigeko Kubota was invited to move to New York from Tokyo in 1964 by the movement’s unofficial leader, George Maciunas. While Kubota’s interdisciplinary work pointed to her influences from John Cage and Marcel Duchamp, in her compositions of television monitors embedded in wooden boxes and other sculptural structures, Kubota emphasized form and permanence rather than the destruction and mutability found in many Fluxus performances. Reflecting the Buddhist environment in which she was raised, Kubota had a fundamental interest in the unfolding of time as depicted in mural paintings and hand scrolls, one which she believed was paralleled in the frame-by-frame unfolding of video.
For the High Line, Kubota presented her silent video, Rock Video: Cherry Blossom (1986). Comprised of layered shots of pale pink cherry blossoms against a bright blue sky, the video uses electronic processing techniques to transform and manipulate the delicate images, creating a dynamic convergence of the natural forms of the blossoms and the technological form of the medium on which they are captured.
Organized by Cecilia Alemani, Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator.
Photos by Timothy Schenck.
Artist bio
Shigeko Kubota (b. 1937, Japan; d. 2015, New York) lived and worked in New York. Notable solo exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1996); the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1992); the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1992); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1980), among others. Selected group exhibitions and screenings include Scream Against the Sky, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (1994); In the Spirit of Fluxus, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1993); Centennial Tribute Apropos of Marcel Duchamp, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (1987); and SoHo-Soap Rain Damage, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (1986). Her work has been presented at international group exhibitions including the Istanbul Biennial (1995); the Gwangju Biennale (1995); the Lyon Biennial (1993); the 8thBiennale of Sidney (1990); Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany (1987); the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1983); and Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany (1977). Kubota has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1998); National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships (1988, 1980, 1978, and 1975); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987); and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Fellowship (1979); among others.
Support
High Line Art is presented by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. High Line Art is made possible by Donald R. Mullen, Jr. and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, with additional support from David Zwirner Gallery, and Vital Projects Fund, Inc. High Line Art is supported, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
