Jointly Planned with Busan Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Hall and Nam June Paik Art Center until March 16, 2025
Highlighting Avant-Garde Artist Nam June Paik... Large-Scale Retrospective Exhibition Covering All Periods of Nam June Paik's Artistic World
Busan Museum of Modern Art will hold a large-scale exhibition titled "Nam June Paik, Nam June Paik, and Nam June Paik," highlighting the artistic challenges of Nam June Paik, in Exhibition Rooms 4 and 5 until March 16, 2025.
Nam June Paik is a representative artist of the 20th century and a pioneer of media art. Using various technologies?from happenings and performance art, television and broadcasting, satellites, large-scale video installations to lasers?he worked experimentally and creatively. He stated, "The role of the artist is to contemplate the future," and gifted humanity with joyful global communication and encounters through the artistic repurposing of technology. Continuously challenging new technologies and art, Nam June Paik is still regarded as the most "modern artist."
This exhibition is a retrospective dedicated to Nam June Paik, an avant-garde artist who lived a life of constant challenge to new media and art and foresaw the future more clearly than anyone else. It is co-planned by Busan Museum of Modern Art and the Nam June Paik Art Center (Director Park Nam-hee).
Through collaboration between the professional staff of both institutions, it is expected to greatly contribute to sharing public museum assets and spreading and developing museum culture.
This is the largest retrospective held in a domestic museum since Nam June Paik’s passing, featuring over 160 works, photographs, videos, and archival materials, including rare pieces and works from his early world that have rarely been shown in Korea.
In particular, 87 collection items, 38 materials, and 15 videos loaned from the Nam June Paik Art Center will be exhibited for the first time in Busan.
Additionally, works loaned from major domestic and international collections such as the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Ulsan Museum of Art, Gyeongbuk Cultural Tourism Corporation, and Museum f?r Moderne Kunst Frankfurt can also be seen.
"Nam June Paik, Nam June Paik, and Nam June Paik" illuminates all artistic media Nam June Paik worked with, from his early Fluxus activities to the lasers he challenged before his death in 2006. As a pioneer of video art who bridged technology and art, he led global art trends and greatly influenced contemporary art, showcasing his futuristic vision.
Nam June Paik 'Hand and Face', 1961, video, black and white, silent. Nam June Paik Art Center Video Archive ? Nam June Paik Estate
The exhibition begins with Nam June Paik’s 1961 performance video "Hand and Face," an early work showing the young Nam June Paik treating himself as the medium of art and recognizing his artistic self. Next, visitors can view "Fluxus Champion Contest" (1962), a performance where artists of various nationalities urinate around a bucket while calling out their countries, highlighting Nam June Paik’s humor that challenges social and artistic authority.
Works exhibited at Nam June Paik’s first solo exhibition in 1963, "Exhibition of Music - Electronic Television," including television pieces such as "Magnet TV" and "Crown TV," along with vivid photographs capturing the exhibition atmosphere, are also on display.
Additionally, the first robot created by Nam June Paik, "Robot K-456" (1964(1995)), blueprints of the robot device drawn by Shuya Abe, and original letters exchanged between Nam June Paik and Abe are exhibited. The "Opera Sextronique" by cellist Charlotte Moorman, who collaborated with Nam June Paik for a long time, is also displayed.
In a separately prepared cinema, 15 representative videos by Nam June Paik can be viewed on a large screen. These include the interview-style video "Nam June Paik: Editing for Television" (1975), where Nam June Paik explains his art, as well as videos spanning his artistic world from "Dedicated to John Cage" (1973) to "The Tiger Is Alive" (1999). The 2023 documentary "Nam June Paik: The Moon Is the Oldest TV," directed by Amanda Kim, will also be screened, offering an intriguing perspective on Nam June Paik as the 20th century’s first digital creator.
In a special space connecting the first and second floors, visitors can appreciate the highlight of Nam June Paik’s large-scale installation work through "Cage’s Forest - Revelation of the Forest." This piece features an 8-meter-high tree forming a forest with monitors hanging from the branches, expressing Nam June Paik’s tribute to the vitality of nature and his artistic mentor John Cage. The exhibition also includes "Gulliver," a work consisting of a large Gulliver robot surrounded by 18 Lilliputian robots.
Nam June Paik, 'Samwonso', 1999, 1 laser, wooden frame, mirror, translucent plexiglass, optical system, 2 prisms, 2 motors, motor power supply, fog machine, collection of Nam June Paik Art Center ? Nam June Paik Estate.
At the end of the exhibition, the laser work "Triad Elements," which Nam June Paik last exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2000, is presented. Opposite it is "108 Delusions," a work showing short segmented videos on 108 TV monitors that depict Korea’s historical upheavals and Nam June Paik’s personal deep anguish. This piece was specially created by the artist for the 1998 Gyeongju World Culture Expo and has been refurbished and restored for this exhibition.
Nam June Paik, '108 Bonnoe', 1998, 108 CRT monitors of 20-inch and 29-inch, color, sound, 50 minutes, variable size. Collection of Gyeongsangbuk-do Culture and Tourism Corporation.
Seungwan Kang, Director of Busan Museum of Modern Art, stated, "At the center of Nam June Paik’s optimistic vision of the technological media era was always humanity. Through the connection and dissemination of information via technological media, he dreamed of communication and fusion among humans beyond regions, eras, religions, and ideologies." He added, "We hope this grand retrospective of Nam June Paik, a visionary who transcended the century, will provide an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between humans, art, and technological civilization."
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