Wrap around the Time

Artists: A.Typist (Taeyong Kim, Hankil Ryu, lo wie), Bubble Deck Auto Wash Charlotte Norm, Carsten Nicolai, Daisuke Yamashiro, David Haines, Isabella Fürnkäs, Joyce Hinterding, Jungki Baek, Rapahela Vogel, Ryu Biho, Sora Kim, UJINO, Vakki, Wang Yuyang, Zhang P

Nam June Paik Art Center will be presenting Wrap around the Time as a special exhibition. With 11 curators and 15 artists, the idea actually started from Wrap around the World, which is a project Nam June Paik completed for the 1988 Seoul Olympics. He tried to symbolize the end of the Cold War era by connecting all the regions and cultures around the world using the satellite system. Many countries including China and Russia across the East and West participated in this project, and the boundaries between genre and cultural hierarchies were dissolved. Most importantly, the project presented one, unified Earth beyond the limitations of physical distance by consolidating the physical realm of regional cultures using the satellite system.

Nam June Paik Art Center’s Wrap around the Time builds on Wrap around the World, as a special exhibition planned for the 10th anniversary since Paik’s passing. The project attempts to go a step further from consolidating physical spaces, and dissolve/connect the temporal gaps between the past, present, and future. Such space-time compressions will take place through Paik, as well as the collaboration of contemporary artists.

Nam June Paik Art Center selected contemporary media artists who will produce and prove various discourses across the past and present by researching Paik’s works, building a research center comprising humanists, scientists, and aestheticians around the world. The exhibition will present their work in relation to with Paik’s works that serve as original inspirations. Though this process, Nam June Paik Art Center will be reminded of the fact that Paik’s art world stands firm at the foundation of various contemporary cultural phenomena and discourses.

Through Wrap around the Time, various studies will be conducted about Paik, and new discourses will be generated. Also, Paik and contemporary artists will become one across the spatial and temporal gap between the 20th and the 21st centuries. Our focus is not only on re-illuminating Paik’s art, but also focusing on and verifying the infinite expandability of Paik’s artistic world.