The Worlds of Nam
June Paik
@ The Guggenheim Museum
ne
of the most notable artist of the 20th Century is the video and
television installation genius of Nam June Paik from Korea. He is
exhibiting now at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Uptown). This
exhibition draws on past works with those done in collaboration with
Charlotte Moorman and recent versions of his past works. The show covers
the interior rotunda of the museum and is a visually breath-taking
experience because of the sound and the television screens which are
portraying, I believe to be, Japanese music videos, a still picture of a
full moon with birds flying by it and three people dancing.
Each scene of Modulation in
Sync (2000) is scattered in about eighty television sets. Here, Paik
is showing part of his world through the use of the medium of television.
The sound of the Japanese music videos and the darkness of the museum
itself gives this "world" that Paik created an infinite study of
life and interaction. Paik also uses video to establish a symbolist
connection of his remaking of video into an artist’s medium.
As you look up there are screens
that are projecting the programs of Japanese television and farther up in
the oculus of the rotunda is Sweet and Sublime, a laser show that
forms into geometric shapes and spirals that rapidly change. Also in the
main floor is Jacob’s Ladder, which is a seven-story waterfall
with a green laser that cascades down the waterfall in zigzags that form a
visual link that enhances sound, sight and energy.
Along the ramps are more of his
works. One that is brilliant to me is TV Clock of 1963 (2000
version). This installation consists of twenty-four televisions arranged
in a row. In each screen there is a neon light that reached from one end
to the other. It definitely gives a futuristic frame of mind about how
time will be in the 21st Century. Another quizzical
installation is that of Video Buddha of 1976-1978. Here there is a
bronze sculpture of a Buddha and a small television set that showing the
sculpture. There is a film camera that is filming the sculpture. His
interest in time and the historical documenting is captured in this work
where a timeless figure is being viewed also in a video for mass
exhibition.
Another extension of this same
concept is a camera filming the pendulum of a clock on the wall to three
television sets. Each screen has a different rotation of the pendulum.
Paik chooses to film the part of the clock that sways back and forth and
capture the rotation of life and time. The fact that we can see the object
itself in our world and then seen in the video world employs a transition
from physicality to timelessness.
Video Fish of 1975 (2000
version) is a continuation of TV Clock, where the rhetorical
aesthetic are arranged in a new way of seeing. Here, there are television
screens on the background of the tank and are arranged in a row as TV
Clock. The screen shows a man dancing and his silhouette dancing next
to him. Nature is seen in front of a technological medium of man. The
ironic joining of two polar substances are compared as similar ways of
seeing, viewing through a barrier and collecting energy, time and sound as
the world flows into the next century.
Family of Robots: Hi-Tech
Baby, Grandfather and Grandmother of 1886 are sculptures made out of
televisions and are represented as a family. The grandfather and the
grandmother are built out of old television sets, thus representing the
past and their age in historical contexts. The screens are displaying
various abstract images. The baby is made out of more hi-tech and smaller
televisions and represents the present, youth and the future. Thus, there
is a continuation from the older family to the present family and all f
the historical and past events are linked together.
Another part of the exhibition is
Paik and the Worlds of Film and Video, 1965-1974. This part of his
exhibition is a concentration on his performance pieces and an attribution
to Charlotte Moorman, a celloist. Here, we see a video of someone doing a
performance of breaking a violin. There is also a little room that one
might sit and here classical music and look at black and white pictures of
the performance. Performance Art for me is a credible maneuver from the
traditional medium of the canvas to a more personal and intimate portrayal
of the artist. John Cage, Laurie Anderson and Joseph Beuys are artists of
this still rather new medium of art. Video installation is a continuation
of this art form into a more present and reachable future. Bill Viola is
an extraordinary artist that uses time and video together to express
infinity and ways of seeing.
As our future becomes visualized
as a more technological advanced society, and I believe that our world
would be so consumed by computers and all of that "garbage" that
computers bring, art has to be seen in this manner also. Because
therefore, we can share in these new ideas and feelings that everyone
feels because of technology. Therefore, artists like Paik takes a step
further away from the canvas and paint and uses video and light to express
aesthetics and expressions. Technology can be a way of destruction or
advancement. It is the job of the art world to communicate with the
growing of our future. Paik uses video to educate the mass of our world
and the presence of changing cultures and virtues.
ne
of the most notable artist of the 20th Century is the video and
television installation genius of Nam June Paik from Korea. He is
exhibiting now at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Uptown). This
exhibition draws on past works with those done in collaboration with
Charlotte Moorman and recent versions of his past works. The show covers
the interior rotunda of the museum and is a visually breath-taking
experience because of the sound and the television screens which are
portraying, I believe to be, Japanese music videos, a still picture of a
full moon with birds flying by it and three people dancing. 
