Nam June Paik (Opening)

Nam June Paik is internationally recognized as co-founder of the Fluxus movement and the most important pioneer of media art. After his encounter with John Cage, when participating in the courses for New Music in Darmstadt, in 1958, Paik initially went on to merge performance, music and television (1963) in his Actions. He was the first artist worldwide who, as early as 1965, went to use the up-and-coming medium of video in multifaceted live actions, video tapes, TV broadcasts, projections and video installations. The development of his video synthesizer (1969/70) enabled him to form the "TV screen and projection screen as precisely as Leonardo, as freely as Picasso, as colorfully as Renoir, as profoundly as Mondrian, as wildly as Pollock and as lyrically as Jasper Johns" in video images drawn from different sources and used in live performances (Nam June Paik). It was here, with his unmistakably colorful works, that Paik was to make his breakthrough, an achievement which continues to exert influence on media art internationally.

The exhibition in the entrance Foyer of the EnBW building in Durlacher Allee, Karlsruhe displays over 30 of Nam June Paik's works drawn from the ZKM Collection, among which are the Art Satellites Canopus (1989), the meditating Buddha (1989) poised before a candle within an empty television case, the video wall Internet Dream (1995) comprising 52 monitors, a gift by the RTL Group, as well as the rarely seen Noah's Arch (1989), especially restored for the present exhibition, and the important work Versailles Fountain (1992), which will be made available to the ZKM by a private collection.