The inaugural edition titled Topologies of the Real: Techne Shenzhen 2022 is organized as a  three-part exhibition under the rubrics of Reality Interrupted, The Return of the Real, and  Multiverse: Ecology without Nature. The exhibition examines various trajectories of how  artistic imagination has challenged and redefined the notion of reality under the technological  construct of spacetime manifestly accelerated since the mid-twentieth century and how such  artistic endeavors have brought to light the political, economic, and cultural conundrums and  creative potentialities implicated by a flattened and instantaneously digital contemporary. The  Covid-19 pandemic further aggravates the notion of perceived reality. Artworks conceived and  produced during the past two years amidst the harrowed existence will be included to bring to  the fore a new exigency that is catastrophically larger than human capacity while at the same  time prompting redeeming hopes for the solidarity of humans and things in a symbiotic  worldmaking.  

ZKM’s Art in Motion will be presented parallel to the thematic component Reality Interrupted to  situate the exhibition in a yet deeper time of media art history. The two exhibitions will utilize  Shenzhen Museum’s state of the art facilities, totaling over 8000 square meters (over 86000  square feet). 

The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, announces Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality, on view in the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, and adjacent Gallery 414 from August 21, 2021, through January 1, 2022. Likening video technology to a “new paintbrush,” New York–based Shigeko Kubota (Japanese, 1937–2015) was one of the first artists to commit to the video medium in the early 1970s. Though formally trained as a sculptor, Kubota’s varied accomplishments as an artist, collaborator, curator, and critic helped to shape a pivotal period in the evolution of video as an art form.

The first solo presentation of the artist’s work at a US museum in 25 years, this exhibition focuses on a body of work whose resonances are particularly poignant amid the digitally interconnected world of today.

The six sculptural works in the exhibition include: Three Mountains (1976-1979), Berlin Diary: Thanks to My Ancestors (1981), River (1979-1981), Niagara Falls I (1985), Video Haiku (1981), and Duchampiana: Nude Descending a Staircase (1976).

Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality is organized by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, with the support of Veronika Molnar, Intern, Department of Media and Performance.

The Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art is the first large-scale museum in Japan after the death of Shigeko Kubota (1937-2015), who was born in Maki-cho, Nishikambara-gun, Niigata Prefecture (currently Nishikan-ku, Niigata City) and was active internationally. We will hold a solo exhibition. Known for his "video sculpture," which combines video and sculpture, Kubota is considered one of the pioneers of video art. However, her contribution to contemporary art has not been fully appreciated.

The purpose of this exhibition is to present a new image of a writer based on the latest research on Shigeko Kubota, who was active as a Japanese female artist based in the United States. Immediately after her death in 2015, the Shigeko Kubota Video Art Foundation was established in New York to protect and further develop its heritage. In this exhibition, in addition to the video sculptures restored by the Foundation, a large number of materials that will be released for the first time will be exhibited, including drawings and materials kept by the artist, as well as collections of domestic museums and borrowed items from the artist's bereaved family. To do.

What did you think and how did you pursue expression as a female writer who developed her own art on the world stage in the early days of the media called video? Starting with Niigata, this exhibition will take about a year to visit three museums nationwide, including the masterpiece "Duchampiana" series, video sculptures, video works, sketches and archive materials for them, Kubota. I will exhibit my work.

Stay Tuned for details….

In an age dominated by digital technology, The Body Electric explores themes of the real and virtual, the organic and artificial, moving from the physical world to the screen and back again. Today, computer and phone screens are fast becoming the primary places of encountering new information, effectively blurring the boundary between three-dimensional space and the two-dimensional image. The exhibition presents work by an international and intergenerational group of artists who examine ways that photographic, televisual, and digital media change our perceptions of the human body and everyday life.

With pieces ranging from the 1960s to today, The Body Electric brings together artists such as Trisha Baga, Nam June Paik, and Shigeko Kubota, whose work across performance, sculpture, and moving image conflates the physical world and its life on screen. For some artists, including Martine Syms, Andrea Crespo, and Lynn Hershman Leeson, the lens of the camera creates a space to rethink the representation of sociopolitical identities and to question the structures that govern our understanding of race, gender, and sexuality. For others, such as Mark Leckey, Pierre Huyghe, and Bruce Nauman, technology offers opportunities to consider the malleable, fragmented, and impossible body.

Charting the embrace and manipulation of technology across varying generations, The Body Electric examines how the screen has increasingly shifted ways that we picture ourselves and understand our place in the world.

Contains mature content.

Artists in the Exhibition
Laurie Anderson, Ed Atkins, Trisha Baga, Dara Birnbaum, Zach Blas, James Byrne, Peter Campus, Petra Cortright, Andrea Crespo, Zackary Drucker, Rhys Ernst, VALIE EXPORT, Simone Forti, Robert Gober, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Pierre Huyghe, Juliana Huxtable, Sanja Iveković, Joan Jonas, Josh Kline, Shigeko Kubota, Carolyn Lazard, Candice Lin & Patrick Staff, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Helen Marten, Ana Mendieta, Charlotte Moorman, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Letícia Parente, Sondra Perry, Howardena Pindell, Ulrike Rosenbach, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Marianna Simnett, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman, Wolf Vostell, the Wooster Group, Anicka Yi

In an age dominated by digital technology, The Body Electric explores themes of the real and virtual, the organic and artificial, moving from the physical world to the screen and back again. Today, computer and phone screens are fast becoming the primary places of encountering new information, effectively blurring the boundary between three-dimensional space and the two-dimensional image. The exhibition presents work by an international and intergenerational group of artists who examine ways that photographic, televisual, and digital media change our perceptions of the human body and everyday life.

With pieces ranging from the 1960s to today, The Body Electric brings together artists such as Trisha Baga, Nam June Paik, and Shigeko Kubota, whose work across performance, sculpture, and moving image conflates the physical world and its life on screen. For some artists, including Martine Syms, Andrea Crespo, and Lynn Hershman Leeson, the lens of the camera creates a space to rethink the representation of sociopolitical identities and to question the structures that govern our understanding of race, gender, and sexuality. For others, such as Mark Leckey, Pierre Huyghe, and Bruce Nauman, technology offers opportunities to consider the malleable, fragmented, and impossible body.

Charting the embrace and manipulation of technology across varying generations, The Body Electric examines how the screen has increasingly shifted ways that we picture ourselves and understand our place in the world.

Contains mature content.

Artists in the Exhibition
Laurie Anderson, Ed Atkins, Trisha Baga, Dara Birnbaum, Zach Blas, James Byrne, Peter Campus, Petra Cortright, Andrea Crespo, Zackary Drucker, Rhys Ernst, VALIE EXPORT, Simone Forti, Robert Gober, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Pierre Huyghe, Juliana Huxtable, Sanja Iveković, Joan Jonas, Josh Kline, Shigeko Kubota, Carolyn Lazard, Candice Lin & Patrick Staff, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Helen Marten, Ana Mendieta, Charlotte Moorman, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Letícia Parente, Sondra Perry, Howardena Pindell, Ulrike Rosenbach, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Marianna Simnett, Martine Syms, Ryan Trecartin, Amalia Ulman, Wolf Vostell, the Wooster Group, Anicka Yi

Curators: Pavel Pyś with Jadine Collingwood

Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995 is organized by Henriette Huldisch, Director of Exhibitions and Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center. The presentation at SculptureCenter is organized by SculptureCenter Executive Director and Chief Curator Mary Ceruti. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue edited by Henriette Huldisch with additional contributions by Edith Decker-Phillips and Emily Watlington, published by Hirmer Verlag in association with the MIT List Visual Arts Center.

From video art's beginnings, artists engaged with the sculptural properties of the television set, as well as the possibilities afforded by juxtaposing multiple moving images. Artists assembled monitors in multiple configurations and video walls, and from the 1980s onward incorporated TV sets into elaborate environments and architectural settings. In concert with technological advances, video editing and effects also grew more sophisticated. These video works articulated a range of conceptual and thematic concerns related to the television medium, the still and moving image, seriality, figuration, landscape, and identity. The material heft of the cube monitor (before the advent of the flat-screen) anchored these works firmly in three-dimensional space. Before Projection focuses on the period after very early experimentation in video and before video art's full arrival—coinciding with the wide availability of video projection equipment—in galleries and museums alongside painting and sculpture. 

WhiteBox is excited to present “A Colossal World: Japanese Artists and New York, 1950s – Present,” a group exhibition curated by Kyoko Sato. Spanning the entirety of WhiteBox’s two-leveled exhibition space, the show features the video, sculpture, murals, installation, and two-dimensional media works by over 50 Japanese artists who emigrated to New York during the formative stages of their careers.

“A Colossal World” investigates the reciprocal channels of influence established between multiple generations of Japanese artists and the city of New York. While these artists absorbed elements of New York’s culture into new artworks, they also impacted and enriched New York’s culture itself. This exhibition, though not claiming to be a historical or academic in-depth study, aims to help trace the evolution of this vibrant exchange from Japan’s post-World-War-II economic boom to the present, from mid-century avant-gardes to emerging contemporary artists pushing new boundaries.

In the wake of the Second World War, Japan’s relationship with the United States became further complicated with the U.S. occupation of Japan and the influx of American culture. At the same time, the center of the art world moved from Paris to New York. The loosening of social and economic constraints in Japan allowed the emergence of a number of remarkable artists who produced increasingly avant-garde works. Dreaming of the expanded art world available through the New York art scene, many of these Japanese artists migrated to New York. The city provided these artists new platforms for expression and provocation—for example, pioneering artists like Yoko Ono, Shigeko Kubota, and Ay-O were able to contribute further to the burgeoning Fluxus movement, and Shusaku Arakawa and Ushio Shinohara to Neo-Dada, working with and around New York figures like John Cage, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Allan Kaprow, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns. Also, growing globalization and the development of international art movements allowed artists to traverse the distance between New York and Japan and split time between the two nations, allowing them to be truly bi-cultural.

In the post-economic bubble of the 1990s, when people became disillusioned with the myth of Japanese safety in the wake of economic depression, natural disaster, and terrorism, another major wave of emigration to New York occurred. Many of these artists, including Takashi Murakami and Tomokazu Matsuyama, explored the convergences between art and popular culture, from anime-inspired aesthetics to collaborations with major fashion labels. In the uncertain years since the recession of 2008, emerging Japanese artists have continued to emigrate to New York, reflecting today’s globalized culture and securing an ongoing legacy of artistic exchange.

Throughout the exhibition, visitors will see the particular ways in which Japanese artists have contributed to the betterment of New York City’s cultural landscape—from mid-century avant-gardes to emerging contemporary artists pushing new boundaries. The exhibition will not be chronological, but will juxtapose works from different periods to show various themes and threads of influence. The intent is to consider artworks as living documents alongside extensive documentation, always being reinterpreted through the present moment.

“A Colossal World” features works by AIKO, Noriko Ambe, Ei Arakawa, Shusaku Arakawa, Ay-O, Eiko & Koma, Makoto Fujimura, Tom Haar, Toru Hayashi, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Ken Hiratsuka, Yasuo Ihara,Takahiko Iimura, Gen’ichiro Inokuma, KAORUKO, Emiko Kasahara, On Kawara, Takeshi Kawashima, Kenji Kojima, Miwa Komatsu, Tatsuo Kondo, Shigeko Kubota, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Yayoi Kusama, Sebastian Masuda, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Takashi Murakami, Nobuho Nagasawa, Rakuko Naito, Naoto Nakagawa, Toshiko Nishikawa, Masaaki Noda, Oscar Oiwa, Kenzo Okada, Yoko Ono, Takako Saito, Masaaki Sato, Hiroshi Senju, Noriko Shinohara, Ushio Shinohara, Mieko Shiomi, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Kunié Sugiura, Mayumi Terada, Yuken Teruya, thousand pictures, Yasunao Tone, Momoyo Torimitsu, Toyo Tsuchiya, Motoko Wada, Yoshimasa Wada, Yukinori Yanagi, Yoichiro Yoda, Minoru Yoshida.