(Entered September 10, 2000)

From Ono-Net, Jordan Scoggins, The Yoko Ono Archives

"The Four Seasons" and Film Stills - Official Press Release

September 15 - October 21, 2000
Gallery hours are 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM, Tuesday through Saturday.
16 East 78 Street, New York City.

Ubu Gallery is pleased to present Yoko Ono: "The Four Seasons" and Film Stills. Ubu's exhibition anticipates the retrospective exhibition of Ono's work at the Japan Society Gallery in New York, which will run from October 18, 2000 through January 14, 2001.

The exhibition at Ubu Gallery will be in two parts. One segment will be a new, mixed media installation of objects and photographs entitled "The Four Seasons."

The other segment will be an exhibition of two groups of photographs (enlarged film stills) from two of Ono's seminal films: "No. 4 (Bottoms)," 1966-67 and "Fly," 1968-70. The photographs will be available individually and as complete sets in uniquely designed boxes containing a DVD of the source film. Neither the films nor images from the films have previously been available for purchase. Between 1966 and 1972, Ono conceived, produced and directed more than 16 films, which, by virtue of their emphasis on stylistic and formal issues and as part of a general assault on film conventions in the 1960's, occupy a unique place in the history of the American independent film.

Filmmaker, musician, performer, object-maker and, foremost, conceptual artist, Yoko Ono is, above all, a poet. She emerged as an artist in the late 1950's in New York City and her presence was noted and felt in the avant-garde scene at that time. During the summer of 1961, Ono's first solo exhibition took place in New York at AG Gallery, the short-lived enterprise of George Maciunas, spiritual leader of Fluxus.

It was at AG that she introduced to the public her "instruction paintings," works which consisted of instructions for creating the work and directions for viewer participation. In the fall of that year, Ono gave a concert at Carnegie Recital Hall during which she stimulated audience participation. These were the first of a series of interactive events that she performed throughout the decade. In 1971, Ono was honored with her first museum exhibition at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, New York.

the exhibition at Ubu Gallery reflects the paradoxical aesthetic that Yoko Ono has always projected. The tensions inherent in the extremities of human emotion and natural forces--destruction versus creation and violence versus peace, for example--energize the creativity and stimulate the political activism of this extraordinary artist.