Each week we pay homage to a select "Original Creator" — an iconic artist from days gone by whose work influences and informs today's creators. These are artists who were innovative and revolutionary in their fields. Bold visionaries and radicals, groundbreaking frontiersmen and women who inspired and informed culture as we know it today. This week: Hyun-Ki Park.Pioneer of Korean minimal video art, Hyun-Ki Park (1942-2000) is famed for his idiosyncratic negotiations on the boundaries of experimentation in conceptual art, particularly in regards to the experience of perception. Often overshadowed by the clout of renowned Korean-American video artist Nam June Paik, Park distinguishes himself from other video artists of his generation by approaching the medium with an Eastern philosophical disposition and re-interpreting it as a spiritual symbol of materialism and Western technology. Instead of delving into and exploring the more technologically advanced opportunities characteristic of popular video art, Park radicalized his work with a low-tech simplicity that treated the television monitor and televised image as sculptures in and of themselves, while circumscribing themes of meditation and material reflection.Featuring organic elements such as stones and water, his work conveys parallels with the logic behind Marcel Duchamp's found art, the Japanese Mono-ha Movement, as well as the Italian concept of arte povera in that all three loosely focus on the rearrangement or modification of objects not commonly considered to be art. They function as an artistic intervention, challenging pre-existing perceptions as well as institutional hierarchies in art.We touch on some of Park's seminal projects to convey the gravity of his contributions to the foundation of Korean experimental video art.Stone Tower (1978)
This sculpture of stones and a monitor displaying footage of stones marked a pivotal moment for Park, garnering him international recognition and invitations to participate in the 1979 São Paulo Biennale, as well as the Paris Biennale the following year. As Stone Tower vividly illustrates, Park’s work often dealt with the juxtaposition of nature and modern civilization in an effort to harmonize the two contrasting elements, resulting in pieces that are poignantly subtle and substantially meditative. This video pagoda, as some refer to it, ultimately became Park's lasting trademark, fostering his endeavor to bewilder the perception of simple phenomena.Another stone and monitor piece, TV Seesaw (1984)Video Inclining Water (1979)Presented at the São Paulo Biennale in 1979, this performance project is a simulation in which the televised water shifts in congruence with the orientation of the monitor, evoking the effect of gravity. Again, Park demonstrates his Eastern sentimentality by showcasing the natural element of water while acknowledging the burgeoning influence of technology, and thus Western civilization, via the video medium.Another noteworthy, and rather risqué, project performed in 1985 at Kamakura Gallery in Tokyo involved Park as himself, completely naked, embracing and caressing monitors that displayed pornographic footage of the female body. Continuing his fascination with tweaking the perception of the material and immaterial, this presentation shocked the relatively modest Tokyo audience, guaranteeing an everlasting mark on the contemporary conceptual art scene. Certainly a sight to be sought, it is unfortunately difficult to find footage from this performance.Mandala Series (1997)Definitively different from his other minimal video works, Mandala comprises a kinetic collage that questions the separation between the sacred and the secular. Titillating images of heated copulation layered with depictions of Buddha next to abstractions of flowers, animals, and Sanskrit letters in between, this kaleidoscopic montage confronts the sacrilegious condition relative to both the sacred and secular worlds.With but a few global appearances later in his career, like the 1999 Sharjah Biennale of The Emirates and several showcases throughout the US, Park was more exclusive with his work and himself, isolating his exhibitions to mostly domestic and Japanese galleries. Despite the paramount effect his work had on the advancement of minimal video art, the relatively esoteric knowledge on Park may be due to the cultural, as well as geographic, specificity of his approach to video and technology. The emphasis on objects and materiality, characteristic to the 1970s trend in Korean minimal art, and the underlying rejection to Western modernity embedded in his Eastern philosophy, may have encumbered a wider acknowledgment on the global scale. Nonetheless, his persistent passion to confront the experience of perception and challenge the illusion of truth positions his elemental efforts of nearly 30 years as a revolutionary contributor to the artistic application of video.
Advertisement