The Way to Memorialize Nam June Paik
The Way to Remember Nam June Paik
- Homage to Nam June Paik by 5 Media Artists
In commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the birth of Nam June Paik, at the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), the Seoul Design Foundation presents an exhibition featuring the works of five next-generation media artists created in homage to Paik. Produced by young Korean media artists Shuk, Buttercup, Vincentia Yang, Chang Seo Won, and Yeniko, the works of art are reinterpretations of Paik’s artistic vision of pursuing communication with the present through a reconstruction of symbolic events. The exhibition has been planned based on the Art Square Gallery’s exhibition called 《An Homage to Nam June Paik, an Artist Who Lived ahead of His Time》, and holds special significance for being held in Dongdaemun area where Paik spent his childhood from 1937 to 1950. Notably, works in this exhibition entitled 《The Way to Memorialize Nam June Paik》, are showcased on a transparent media wall that is a permanent display medium of Seoulight, a media art platform for promoting design, arts & culture, and technology. Paying tribute to Paik, an artist who expanded his artistic world through numerous media experiments, the exhibition allows visitors to experience technological innovations provided by a transparent OLED display along with creative interpretations of media art works.
[Participating artists] Shuk, Buttercup, Vincentia Yang, Chang Seo Won, Yeniko
[Exhibited works]
<Virtual Fish> by Shuk, 2022, T-OLED media art, color, 1 min & 1 sec
The work has been created in homage to 《Real Fish / Live Fish》 by Nam June Paik. Inspired by Paik’s media art in which a scene of a live swimming fish is filmed and displayed in real time, Shuk’s version features a virtual fish swimming in and out of televisions in a three-dimensional virtual environment, along with the camera filming the fish, blurring the boundary between reality and virtual space. The fish presented in each television screen has different colours and textures—some resemble real fish while others have surreal features that cannot be seen in the actual world. Overall, this work provides viewers with an opportunity to be absorbed in and contemplate on existential differences in light and color.
<An Everlasting Present> by Buttercup, 2022, T-OLED media art, color, 1 min & 5 sec
<An Everlasting Present>has been inspired by Nam June Paik’s perspective of time and space, fully captured by his phrase “One cannot die if taken once in a video.” Paying homage to the fish on the television screen in Paik’s work, which expresses time and space in various experimental ways, the media art displays an everlasting fish in the metaverse, an extension of the real world into a virtual space.
<Good Morning, Mr.Paik> by Vincentia Yang, 2022, T-OLED media art, color, 1 min & 51 sec
Created in homage to Nam June Paik’s <Good Morning, Mr.Paik >, this work delivers a message to Paik instead of Orwell. The full-fledged use of media technologies in the modern world has enabled people to engage in communication that transcends time and space. Furthermore, the link between people and science is getting stronger than ever before, making Paik’s foresight that televisions will come to eventually substitute canvases come true. Paik once paid tribute to the composer John Cage by cutting off his necktie in a performance, heralding the arrival of new art forms. Similarly, Yang cuts a necktie to pay tribute to Paik.
<Hello, Mr. Orwell> by Chang Seo Won, 2022, T-OLED media art, color, 1 min & 45 sec
The media art focuses on the metaverse, a space where people have come to spend much time since the pandemic outbreak. Noting that Nam June Paik emphasized the positive energies of the media through the satellite television show <Good Morning, Mr.Orwell>, which rethinks television as a two-way communication medium, Chang intricately frames a digital flower that blooms across the metaverse, envisioning a positive future to be driven by metaverse.
<Indeterminate Growth> by Yeniko, 2022, T-OLED media art, color, 33 sec
The work has been created in homage to the ideas presented in Nam June Paik’s works. Inspired by Paik’s somewhat contradictory theme of ‘coexistence of machine and nature,’ the artist has arrived at key phrases and words such as ‘diverse colours,’ ‘free and flexible forms,’ and ‘unrestricted and lasting graphicness.’ Originating from such key phrases and words that can be used to describe both the media and nature, the media art depicts media and nature in a form that grows in a geometric way akin to ‘indeterminate growth,’ in the form of a plant species that retains the capacity for unlimited growth throughout its life.
Hosted by Seoul Design Foundation, Art Square
Graphic design Yuna Kim
게시요청자 : 전시2팀 장희원 선임
