Nam June Paik

I am a communication artist.
—Nam June Paik

Gagosian Hong Kong is pleased to present the first exhibition of Nam June Paik’s work in Hong Kong, following the announcement of the gallery’s worldwide representation of his estate.

Born in Korea and living and working internationally, Paik brought television into the realm of art for the first time and treated it as a tactile and multisensory medium. His early interests in composition and performance combined with his radical aesthetic tendencies brought him into contact with protagonists of the counterculture and avant-garde movements of the 1960s, including Fluxus. Such engagement profoundly shaped his outlook at a time when electronic images were becoming increasingly present in everyday life. Trained as a classical pianist, he embraced new technologies as material parts of his repertoire, which later included satellite transmissions, robots, and lasers. In 1974 Paik coined the term “electronic superhighway” to describe the exponential growth of new forms of communication. His installations, performances, and writings contributed to the creation of a media-based culture that expanded the very definition and aesthetic possibilities of making art.

Video sculptures, paintings, and drawings produced during the last decade of Paik’s life, many of which have never been exhibited, will be presented together with key works from the 1960s through the 1980s. The exhibition testifies to his lifelong exploration of the role of technology in culture, including the dissemination of infinite images via television. In TV Chair (1968), he harnessed the closed-circuit capacities of video to engage the viewer. The autobiographical installation 359 Canal Street (1991) comprises wall-mounted television parts and a desk containing personal letters from Paik’s friends, including Ray Johnson, Yoko Ono, and Fluxus founder George Maciunas, as well as newspaper clippings on Paik’s activities as an emerging artist in Europe.