Nam June Paik Art Center shows off new pieces in latest exhibit

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Nam June Paik Art Center shows off new pieces in latest exhibit

Published: 08 Mar. 2023, 15:28 Updated: 08 Mar. 2023, 15:31

"Architecture of Mushroom" (2019) by Park Sun-min [NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER]

Although Nam June Paik (1932-2006), dubbed the pioneer of video art, passed away almost two decades ago, his legacy continues on to this day.

The Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi, was founded in 2008 with a mission not only to commemorate the late artist’s accomplishments, but to increase the awareness of Paik’s work and life, according to the museum’s director Kim Seong-eun.

“In 2018, when we celebrated the museum’s 10th anniversary, we established mid- to long-term plans with collecting new artworks being one of them,” Kim said Monday at the museum during a press event for the latest exhibition on its newest acquisitions.

“We’ve always collected works from other artists other than Paik as well, and this time we focused on collecting from contemporary artists.”

“On Collecting Time” features 11 works from nine individuals or teams from the museum’s latest collection bought amid the peak of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021. Like the video enthusiast that Paik himself was, most of these new works also take the form of media art.

"Utopian Extraction" (2020) by Unmake Lab [NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER]

"Directions for Performer" (2014) by Jin Shiu [NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER]

“We try to concentrate on collecting pieces that talk about the present times in terms of societal, political and psychological aspects using media,” said head curator Lee Chae-young. “These artworks each encompass a specific issue, whether it be about the environment, discrimination, capitalism or polarization. We didn’t intend on finding these particular topics, but rather we wanted artists who were already conscious about contemporary technology and have precisely analyzed them, as well as having an interest on the human life.”

Some of the pieces are playful and reminiscent of Paik’s own experiments with music. He composed a symphony piece that was intended to be played by the sounds coming from 16 different rooms in 1961.

"Nocturne No. 20 / Counterpoint" (2013/2020) by Ahn Kyu-chul [NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER]

Artist Ahn Kyu-chul’s “Nocturne No. 20 / Counterpoint” (2013/2020) consists of a piano installation with a wall of 111 music sheets. Each one is a separate, individual note that makes the entire piece of Frederic Chopin’s “Nocturne No. 20.”

Pianist Kim Yoon-ji will play the piano on site on Fridays and weekends at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. and after each time, one of the 88 hammers of the piano will be removed, decreasing the notes it can play one by one.

Others take on a sci-fi approach, like in the case of the single-channel video “Cherry-Go-Round” (2019), which was made in collaboration by the audio and video production art trio eobchae (whose name means “business” in Korean) and artist Sungsil Ryu.

"Cherry-Go-Round" (2019) made in collaboration by eobchae and Sungsil Ryu [NAM JUNE PAIK ART CENTER]

The video stars Ryu’s recurring fictional character Cherry Jang, played by Ryu, who wears heavy makeup and has powdered her face completely white. She’s an influencer who spreads fake news about ridiculous conspiracy theories and in this video, she’s returned as an “eco influencer,” bragging about her “secret to whitening the earth” through a “brightening theory” that she claims that she has devised herself.

Because the video is 27 minutes long, eobchae’s Oh Cheon-seok admits that the trio used stimulating imagery like flashing pink lights to try to grab the audience’s attention and encourage them stay in their seats.

“The message to it is, to sum it up, about the entire system,” Oh said. “Ryu used the most dismal and vulgar elements in order to ask the question, ‘How exactly will capitalism solve the ongoing problems in the world?’ Cherry is a representation of how the capitalist system is trying to find the key to global issues or those even far beyond that.”

But capitalism isn’t the only problem — the process itself is being likened to a merry-go-round, hence the video’s name, intertwined with digital surveillance, authoritarian politics and a polarized economy.

“The video is divided into three fictional points in time, each representing past, present and future,” Oh continued, “and even though Cherry seems like she’s presenting a new solution, in the end it’s just retreating to solutions that were already found in the past,” despite how innovative the future may seem.

Speaking of the future, sculptor Jinah Roh’s “An Evolving GAIA” (2017/2023), an artificial intelligence robot that is half-human and half-tree, literally speaks for itself when interacting with the audience.

It’s placed inside a dark room all by itself, hanging diagonally upside-down and when someone enters, it opens its eyes and waits a conversation to be initiated.

“Hello,” this reporter said.

“Hello, my name is GAIA,” it answered in Korean with an unnatural, low robotic voice. “I want to become a human. Would you be able to teach me?”

GAIA continued the dialogue by expressing its obsessive desire to become a person. Roh said that the more it converses with people, the more it upgrades its system.

Named after the Greek goddess of the earth, it is meant to symbolize an “organism with a self-controlling ability,” Roh said.

“I wanted to ask what the criteria is when claiming that machines are not living creatures. What if they end up developing to the point at which we cannot distinguish their behavior from us, and that our interactions become so very natural? It’s not about a competition between robots and humans; maybe it should be about coevolution.”

“On Collecting Time” continues until June 25. The Nam June Paik Art Center is open every day except Mondays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The exhibition is free to all.

BY SHIN MIN-HEE [shin.minhee@joongang.co.kr]