Television drunks
Nam June Paik in Italy
Modena
dedicates an exhibition to the relationship between Korean artist Nam June Paik
(백남준, 白 南 准, 1932-2006) and Italy.
Galleria Civica di
Modena and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena in collaboration with
Fondazione Solares in Parma have organized in fact Nam June Paik in Italy at Palazzo Santa Margherita and Palazzina
dei Giardini. A selection of the works
that Paik made during his stay in Italy or thinking about Italy. A well-beloved
country for him, where in 1993 he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
Galleria Civica di
Modena and Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena in collaboration with
Fondazione Solares in Parma have organized in fact Nam June Paik in Italy at Palazzo Santa Margherita and Palazzina
dei Giardini. A selection of the works
that Paik made during his stay in Italy or thinking about Italy. A well-beloved
country for him, where in 1993 he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
The
quintessential symbol of Italy for Paik is especially Bel canto. For him, a visual artist, music inspires images and
pictures inspire music. Visual art realizes his beloved union between sound and
image. Although in many images of the video no sound or only a confused noise
of the absence of signal can be heard, spectator almost feels the disordered vibration
following the unbroken flow of speedy running images on videos. Big, small,
old, new, broken or working, televisions and radio come on the canvases of
paintings - sculptures made up almost of religious worship - or combine with
precious objects of traditional art from the Far East.
The
selection of works of the exhibition of Modena offers a complete look and
synthesis about the poetics of the Korean master. Oriental Painting, Conductor (1995) is an emblematic work in the
matter of the style of Nam June Paik. A carved Indonesian wooden horse becomes
the support for an anthropomorphic being formed by a television and a radio. The
ancient deliberately contrasts with the modern but finally they tie together.
The same idea of union between classical art of the
Far East and television is in Young
Buddha on Duratrans Bed (1989-1992) where some televisions on shape the
silhouette of an absurd Buddha in meditation in the lotus position on an
ancient Chinese style bed.
Moreover the contrast or better the oxymoron between
television and religion reappears often in the creation of Paik, as Sacred and Profane (1993): a South-Asian-style
statue representing a Reclining Buddha in the act of reaching Nirvana - the condition
of absolute absence of pain and detachment from earthly punishments - rests on
two televisions that form the unique image of a naked woman lying in the same
position of the Sacred Buddha. The vision of the
body of the beautiful naked woman lying it’s the perfect opposite of any detachment
from earthly passions!
Italian
cities inspire the combination of canvas and neon: an almost romantic work
called Piange nel mio cuore. Come piove sulla città (“It rains in my heart as it rains in the city”, 1990), which
is very different for style and material from the other works exposed.
His love
of Italian Opera is at the bottom of Robot
5, Luciano Pavarotti (1995), an anthropomorphic arrangement of some various
ages old radio which truly resembles the curve of the chest of Luciano
Pavarotti taking a run-up to one of his well-known high notes.
Otherwise the
work Maria Callas (1995) is more
graceful and really feminine in shape and it reminds of the famous Greek soprano
in her melancholic childish sensitivity.
Radio, televisions, cables, electric
mechanisms assembled by Paik’s hands really look like human beings. Although images
which flow on video and make spectators’’ eyes and mind drunk are not only the mirror
of our society. It would be very easy and even banal to interpret Nam June Paik’s
works as a blast against television society only. Paik uses the video and changes
it into a pure art object, without any didactic purpose.
Paik turns things of
everyday usage - above all television – into artworks nevertheless
his works don’t look away from mystery, from metaphysics which are at the base
of pure and genuine art.
In his work called senza
titolo / untitled (1990) we see the projected image of a burning candle on
the screen of a dark television shot by a camera. Yesterday as today, in the
modern or old times, the mystery by which we are enclosed is still the same. As
long as we know how to hear from that mystery, as long as we know how to grasp
it by outlining, giving a hint of it. No matter
if with old or new artistic material. Nam June Paik is actually the master of mystery’s
portrayal, although of the mystery glimpsed in the screen of a broken
television.
Floriano Terrano
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