Edited by Erica Papernik-Shimizu. With contributions by Erica Papernik-Shimizu and Gloria Sutton

Shigeko Kubota was one of the first artists to commit to video in the early 1970s, drawn to its freedom from precedent and its expressive potential. Treating recently introduced portable video equipment like a “new paintbrush,” she interwove conceptual concerns and formal experimentation to create hypersaturated, otherworldly explorations of identity, memory, technology, and the natural landscape. She proposed a life for video beyond the constraints of the television monitor with her pioneering video sculptures, which combine the “energy of electrons” with three-dimensional forms made from raw materials like plywood and sheet metal, and often incorporate mirrors and flowing water. Prismatic in their layering of images and meanings yet economical in form, Kubota’s poetic, hybrid works continue to resonate.

Published in conjunction with the first solo exhibition of the artist’s work at a museum in the United States in twenty-five years, Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality provides fresh perspectives on a selection of key video sculptures made through the mid-1980s. In-depth readings, as well as drawings, documentary photographs, and archival ephemera, illuminate her creative process and situate her in the vibrant New York art scene of the day, to which she contributed not only with her own bold multidisciplinary language but with her tireless advocacy for her chosen medium and its diverse practitioners. 112pp; 100 illus.