Paik Nam-june Retrospective Opens in Beijing
By Cathy Rose A. Garcia
Staff Reporter
Beijing ― A retrospective of the works by the late media art pioneer Paik Nam-june opened here in the Chinese capital on Oct. 27.
Paik's first solo exhibition in China kicked off on Saturday evening at the newly opened doART China. It features Paik's video sculptures and installation works from the 1980's and 1990's.
Ryu Jung-hwa, curator for the exhibition and for Gallery Hyundai in Seoul, said this is a very significant exhibition since there are several of Paik's works which are being shown for the first time in Asia.
Among the pieces being shown at doART China are ``Darwin'' (1988), a two-channel video sculpture with monitors on a painted panel; and ``Newton'' (1991), a single channel video sculpture with monitors, television and radio casings, and imitation plants on a painted panel.
Since doART China is committed to showcasing the works of young Chinese artists, Ryu said it is timely to have Paik's exhibition, so that Chinese artists will be able to draw inspiration from his work.
``Now, there are so many young Chinese artists who are very interested in the media. Paik Nam-june's works will be very influential on these young Chinese artists,'' she said.
Ryu said ``Swiss Clock'' (1988), which is a closed-circuit video installation featuring four monitors, a clock and a video camera, is another important work that is being exhibited. Paik allowed viewers to see real-time streaming video of the clock, on a screen on the installation itself.
Paik was born in 1932 in Seoul, Korea, but his family moved to Hong Kong in 1949 before the Korea War, and eventually settled in Tokyo. He studied at the University of Tokyo, graduating with a degree in aesthetics and music history in 1956. He settled in Germany, where he met composer John Cage and George Maciunas, founder of the anti-art movement Fluxus. He joined Fluxus and became a pioneering artist exploring electronic art.
``Paik was not only the founder of media art but also his prophet. … Paik developed insights into media and therefore could predict the future of media decades in advance. His power as an artist is partially due to his power as a prophet,'' Peter Weibel, chairman and CEO of the ZKM Zentrum for Kunst and Medientechnologie, wrote in the exhibition catalogue.
Weibel noted that Paik wrote an essay in 1974, which ``contained the proposition to connect Los Angeles and New York with an 'electronic superhighway,' a broadband communication network of household satellites, coaxial cables, fiber optics, etc.''
Paik was also a performance artist, and collaborated with cellist Charlotte Moorman in risque performances. In 1965, a half-naked Moorman performed Paik's ``Cello Sonata No. 1 for Adults Only.'' Police arrested Moorman and Paik for obscenity when they did the same performance in 1967.
Thirty-five pieces of black and white and color photographs documenting Moorman's performance from 1963 to 1975, as well as the video sculpture ``TV Cello'' also appear at the exhibition. ``TV Cello'' shows television sets stacked on top of each other, forming the shape of a cello.
The exhibition also showcases Paik's quirky robots made out of television sets, which broadcast images continuously.
The only question was why it took so long for Paik, a famous South Korean-born American artist widely considered as the inventor of video art, to have a solo exhibition in China. The retrospective exhibition is overdue, since Paik died in January last year. Since his death, numerous retrospective exhibitions have been held in New York, Los Angeles, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and Korea.
Franck Gautherot, a curator for Le Consortium in France, said the exhibition is a good chance for Chinese artists to see Paik's pioneering video works.
``He is a great pioneer in video art work. His works have never been exhibited in China. … This (exhibition) is a change from all the paintings here. It's good to go back to the basics,'' Gautherot said.
The Paik retrospective is the second exhibition at doART China, a company owned by Gallery Hyundai, since it opened in early October.
In recent years, Beijing has become home to one of the world's most exciting art scenes. Several Korean-owned galleries have already opened in Beijing such as Gallery Artside and Arario Gallery.
The Nam June Paik exhibition runs through Dec. 2. For more information about the exhibition, visit
(in Chinese and English).