Detail: In collaboration with Tate Liverpool, the museum kunst palast, Düsseldorf, dedicates a comprehensive retrospective to Nam June Paik, founder of video and media art. With numerous loans drawn from both international public and private collections, the exhibition brings together German, Anglo-American and Korean research on Paik’s work for the first time and provides an extensive overview of the crucial developments of this extraordinary and influential artist of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The spectrum of this unique showcase ranges from music, (Fluxus-) actions and performance through to the media works: here the “materialised” works – such as the elaborate installations of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – are juxtaposed to video works as well as musical scores, (Fluxus-) concepts and manuscripts dating from the 1950s and 1960s as explosive intellectual charges.
Over thirty large sculptural works will be displayed, numbering among which is the installation Laser Cone, from 1998, to be shown in Germany for the first time, a work stemming from the last of Paik’s creative phases during which period he further developed and adopted laser technology into his work. Some of the other exhibition highlights are V-yramid, 1982, Egg Grows, 1984, One Candle, 1989, and Internet Dream, 1994. Similarly presented for the first time as part of an exhibition, is a large group of the famous TV Buddhas.
Works in graphics, such as a large selection of hand-drawn sketches, will likewise be displayed. Furthermore, visitors will be given the opportunity of becoming acquainted with Paik’s approach to his work and to his way of thinking by way of numerous documents, such as photographs, letters, texts and various other manuscripts.