Immerse Yourself in 'The City of Nam June Paik'
When video no longer just reflects reality, but becomes it.
- Summary
- The Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, South Korea is currently presenting The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun, now on view through October 19
- Featuring works by Paik, Yiyun Kang, Gijeong Goo, Hyewon Kwon, and Inhwa Yeom, the exhibition explores the departure of screens and video as reflections of our reality to reality itself
In this day and age, the ubiquity of screen technology is less of a sci-fi dream than it is a fact of life. Just as Denis Villeneuve envisioned it in Blade Runner 2049, modern cities are something akin to seas of screens, plucking the internet-fueled image ecosystems from our personal devices and enmeshing it into the physical world.
In this accelerated flood of media, video and moving image no longer simply reflects reality, but become it. It’s a shift foreseen by iconic video artist Nam June Paik in what he called “videory”: a future in which history would not be told through words, but images in motion.
This concept is the center focus of a new group exhibition entitled The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun, housed at Paik’s eponymous art center in Yongin, South Korea. Curated by Kwonjin Cho, the show gathers work by Paik alongside Yiyun Kang, Gijeong Goo, Hyewon Kwon, and Inhwa Yeom. Together, the five artists examine the multilayered video environments of our time, chart the evolution of immersive technology and capture this limbo between nature and machine in inventive, artistic light.
“This is more than just a new kind of experience,” the center wrote, “it is a phenomenon that alters the way we remember and perceive the world.” Exploring themes and concepts of post-human life, the ongoing climate crisis and fractures of linear time, the exhibition urges audiences to consider how human life is shaped by staying connected, always on.
The City of Nam June Paik: The Sea Fused with The Sun is now on view through October 19.
Nam June Paik Art Center
10 Paiknamjune-ro, Sanggal-dong,
Giheung-gu, Yongin-si,
Gyeonggi-do, South Korea
