Nam June Paik's solo show in collaboration with the artist's estate on view at APMA Cabinet

Gagosian Gallery opened a comprehensive solo exhibit on the pioneering media artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006) at APMA Cabinet in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Wednesday.

Ken Hakuta, Executor of the Nam June Paik Estate and Paik's nephew, speaks to reporters at the APMA Cabinet in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on April 1. Behind Hakuta is Paik's installation titled “Media Sandwich" (1961-64). [LEE JIAN]

Gagosian gallery opened a comprehensive solo exhibit on the pioneering media artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006) at the APMA Cabinet in Yongsan District, central Seoul, on Wednesday.

Featuring 11 works by Paik, “Nam June Paik: Rewind/Repeat” is a concise exhibition that nonetheless weaves together key moments from approximately 45 years of the artist's practice. The show, organized in collaboration with the Nam June Paik Estate, marks the first time in 25 years that the estate presents Paik's work in Korea.

“Nam June Paik was something of a prophet. He saw the future in ways that are still astonishing today, coining the term ‘electronic highway’ [in 1974, anticipating the global connectivity of the internet age]," Ken Hakuta, Paik’s nephew and executor of his estate, told reporters at the APMA Cabinet on Wednesday. "Far from fearing what is to come, Paik believed that technology could be harnessed to humanize it.”

Paik, widely regarded as the father of video art, was born in Seoul but fled the country at the age of 18 due to the Korean War (1950-53). He studied classical music at the University of Tokyo, initially training to be a composer. As early as the 1950s, Paik began merging his musical studies with technology and challenged the realm of fine art, particularly upon moving to West Germany in 1956, where he joined the international avant-garde collective, the Fluxus group. In 1963, his first solo show at Germany's Galerie Parnass, where he altered television sets, effectively established video art as a new artistic medium. The artist died in 2006 at the age of 73.

“For London and Abroad (Mailbox)” (1982),[LEE JIAN]

His transition from composing to art is apparent in “Media Sandwich" (1961-64), on view at the APMA Cabinet, comprising eight phonograph records from Korea and Japan, eight electronic magazines from Germany and a rotogravure with the year of his birth. The seminal piece is being displayed in Korea for the first time.

“For London and Abroad (Mailbox)” (1982), from Paik's career-high years, is a wooden mailbox encasing one black-and-white and one color television broadcast. It is just one of three surviving from his iconic Whitney retrospective in 1982. The rest, according to Hakuta, were dismantled and used for newer Paik's works, as back then, not many people collected media art and the digital parts to make his artworks were expensive.

His more recent works, such as the “Bakelite Robot” (2003) — vintage radios with LCD monitors stacked in the shape of a robot — highlight how his art attempted to humanize technology.

"TV Bra for Living Sculpture" (1969) [LEE JIAN]

“He was, at his core, a humanist — someone who deeply believed in humankind. He was fascinated by robots, but he also made fun of them. That sense of humor runs throughout his work,” said Hakuta.

“If he were here today, I think he would be thinking about how to humanize AI. As he once said, he made video art because he hated technology — and yet, through that tension, he transformed it into something profoundly human.”

“Nam June Paik: Rewind/Repeat” runs through May 16.

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]