Transmission

Artist: Nam June Paik
Curators: Park Sang Ae, Kim Yoonseo
Laser: Norman Ballard (2002) Jeho Yun (2023)
Technician: Lee Kijun
In collaboration with: Kim YouSuk (RGB Lab)

Transmission imagines the beautiful story that Nam June Paik sought to tell through lasers. In an interview, Paik once said, “Laser beams are very mystical, sweet, and sublime.” The artist who observed technology through the lens of art, Paik created art using media that sent and received signals at frequencies, from electronic music and video to lasers. For Paik, who manipulated television signals to make colorful images and broadcast them for people to enjoy, the laser was a more vibrant and alluring medium that used broader frequency bands. The light emitted by the laser and its floating traces could occupy an infinite space beyond the confines of the television screen. The laser technology allowed Paik to dream anew, who had limited mobility in his later years.

The exhibition invites us to New York in 2002. We can see the preparation process of the exhibition, which displayed cars full of worn-out machines and the laser tower emitting glamorous and brilliant light, the day of the opening, and stories behind the production of the work. Symbols of the machine age and the information age unfold before our eyes once again as we pass through the exhibition hall and step out into the open air like a passage back in time. Why did Paik focus on the laser at the turn of the century? What kind of story did Paik want to tell us with the new medium? Light shooting from Transmission Tower may convey Paik’s message to us two decades later.