NEW YORK - The Guggenheim get hip and enter the 21st century with a tribute to the very cool Nam June Paik -  one of New  York's adopted sons like Clemente whose show ended January 9th at the same venue. The Worlds of Nam June Paik is the first American retrospective of this multi-media artist since 1982 (Whitney Museum NY).  His 'worlds'  link media, technology, pop culture, eastern philosophy, western humour and reflections of the avant garde art world. The exhibition  brings together Paik's sculptures, installations, videotapes, and projects for television. Most impressive will be a spectacular site-specific installation that incorporates two laser projections, one casting images on the rotunda ceiling and the other passing through an actual seven-story waterfall cascading from the top of
the museum to the rotunda floor.  “Laser has been used sporadically throughout the 90’s, but I’ve given it more life by shooting laser beams off into the air,” Paik was quoted as saying in a Korea Herald article.
Audiences will experience the numerous ways in which Paik has treated the electronic moving image and expanded the definition of sculpture and installation art over the past four decades. 

About the Artist : 
Born in 1932 and recently voted Korea's "Artist of the Century" Paik is internationally regarded a the father of video art. Paik came to New York in 1964, after studying and working in Japan and Germany. In 1969, he participated in the landmark exhibition “Television As a Creative Medium” at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York. Also in 1969, Paik and electronics engineer Shuya Abe created the Paik/Abe Video Synthesizer at the New Television Workshop at WGBH in Boston. Many of his videotapes were produced in the 1970’s while he was artist-in-residence at the Television Laboratory at WNET/Thirteen in New York. In 1982, the Whitney Museum of American Art honored him with a comprehensive retrospective of videotapes, video sculptures, installation and performances.
 

Nam June Paik, 'More Logins Less Loggings' - the artist's witty comment on the depletion of the world's rainforests. Paik has created this elegant technological tree; its long fronds of hair made of electrical wiring evoke the jungle, a soft contrast to the grid of video screens mixed with early television units and speakers. Paik's large sculptural pieces such as this are enormously impressive when viewed in a gallery, if only for their phenomenal size. (Try to imagine this one as being about 8 television sets high, to give you an idea). Particularly awe-inspiring are his robot sculptures animated by dozens of moving pictures (as pictured at the top of this page) which seem to have escaped from some Spielberg film set.