On view: September 26 - November 22, 2025

Tuesday - Friday: 10 AM - 6 PM / Saturday: 11 AM - 5 PM
It is closed on Sunday and Monday.

Venue: Korean Cultural Center New York

122 E 32nd Street, New York, NY, 10016 (1st & 2nd Floors)

The year 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation. In commemoration, the Korean Cultural Center New York, in collaboration with the Nam June Paik Art Center and the Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-Koo Foundation, presents Nam June Paik: The Communicator.

Nam June Paik (1932–2006), the founder of video art, was a pioneering artist who freely crossed the boundaries between art and technology. Yet he was more than a mere media experimenter. Through technology, he sought to open new possibilities for connection—between individuals, across cultures, and through shared sensibilities. Above all, he was “a communicator,” an artist of exchange and resonance.

For Paik, art was not an object of contemplation but a site of participation, encounter, and communion. Traversing tradition and modernity, East and West, analog and digital, he realized through art the very spirit of cultural connectivity that underpins today’s K-Culture.

*Courtesy of Nam June Paik Art Center Ⓒ Gianni Melotti*

His iconic works, such as TV Cello and robot sculptures, fused electronic media with traditional forms, creating a wholly new visual language. By transforming television sets into instruments or human-like figures, Paik playfully dismantled the boundaries between machine and human, art and everyday life, performance and play. His robots, built from stacked televisions, symbolized his belief that technology could extend human existence and inspire new ways of imagining the world. These works continue to ask us: What is communication?

“It is the duty of the artist to think about the future.
I am an artist, but I have no interest in conventional art.
My interest lies in the entire world.
For me, every day is a matter of communication.”

- Nam June Paik

Communication was his lifelong pursuit and the essence of art. His works sought the liberation of the senses through technology, envisioning art freed from boundaries and limitations.

In this light, his artistic philosophy resonates deeply with the idea of “liberation” today. If liberation is not only about recovering national sovereignty but also about freeing humanity from the confines of time, space, ideology, and thought, then Paik’s art becomes its living, contemporary embodiment.

This exhibition also highlights his enduring commitment to younger generations and to intergenerational dialogue in art. On the first floor, Paik’s Rehabilitation of Genghis Khan (1993) is presented alongside The Car Toward the Future (2025) by emerging media artist Areum Kim, a work that carries forward Paik’s vision of technology intertwined with humanity, love, and coexistence. This juxtaposition demonstrates how his artistic spirit continues to thrive today—through evolving technologies and new creative voices—while opening pathways toward the future.

Featured Artworks

Courtesy of Nam June Paik Art Center ⓒ Nam June Paik Estate

About the Artists

Nam June Paik

He was born in Seoul in 1932 and studied aesthetics at the University of Tokyo, writing his thesis on the music of Arnold Schoenberg. In 1956, he moved to Germany, where he immersed himself in philosophy and contemporary music while working closely with avant-garde artists who challenged artistic conventions.

In 1963, Paik presented his first solo exhibition, Exposition of Music – Electronic Television, which transformed televisions into works of art and marked the beginning of his lifelong exploration of media. After relocating to the United States in 1964, he developed a groundbreaking body of work that included large-scale installations, performances, and the invention of the video synthesizer.

From the 1980s onward, Paik realized global satellite projects such as Good Morning, Mr. Orwell (1984), breaking down barriers between avant-garde art and popular culture. In 1993, he represented Germany at the Venice Biennale, where his work on the theme of the artist as nomad was awarded the Golden Lion. Even after a stroke in the mid-1990s, Paik continued to work until his passing in Miami in 2006. His legacy endures as that of a visionary who expanded the role of art to imagine the future and to foster global communication through technology.

Areum Kim

Born in Seoul in 1987, she studied Fine Art at the Korea National University of Arts. As a media and visual artist, she explores technology, memory, and the possibilities of coexistence between human and non-human beings. She was awarded the Grand Prize at ONSO ARTIST OPEN CALL 2025, organized by Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-Koo Foundation. Her work has been presented at major galleries and biennales in Korea. Kim often draws from everyday media and digital culture, reimagining them as poetic narratives of connection, love, and shared futures.

For this exhibition, Kim presents The Car Toward the Future (2025), a multimedia work inspired by Nam June Paik’s Rehabilitation of Genghis Khan. In her piece, the car becomes a symbolic vessel journeying across past, present, and future, navigating a sea of undersea cables that represent the global internet. Guided by themes of love and coexistence, the work imagines technology not as an end in itself but as a pathway toward a more compassionate and interconnected world.

About the Collaborating Institutions

Nam June Paik Art Center

Opened to the public in 2008, Nam June Paik Art Center aspires to revive the generosity, criticality and interdisciplinarity characteristic of both Paik’s work and life. As christened by the artist himself, Nam June Paik Art Center aims to be a museum where Paik lives on. It is not just to remain a memorial for the artist, but to seek an active undertaking to increase the awareness of Paik’s work and life far and wide. As a public museum specializing in media art, Nam June Paik Art Center also devotes itself to cultivating artistic and scholarly experiments in creative and critical ways.

Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-Koo Foundation

The Hyundai Motor Chung Mong-Koo Foundation has been actively involved in a wide range of social contribution activities, guided by its founder’s philosophy of contributing to the country and society through business activities. In particular, the Foundation has been committed to nurturing future leaders in line with the founder’s vision.

The Foundation selects outstanding talent from South Korea and ASEAN countries by supporting their studies and research, empowering them to work toward realizing their dreams. We encourage young entrepreneurs to tackle social challenges with innovative solutions, and we also support emerging artists in helping bring K-culture to the global stage.

* Special acknowledgment to Jay Lee, CEO of ByDesign LLC, for her generous support.