After two years of preparation, the HOW Art Museum in Shanghai is finally presenting "Lettres du Voyant : Joseph Boyce x Nam June Paik. German artist Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) and Korean-America artist Nam June Paik (1932-2006) have a long history of collaboration. They were both vanguards of 20th century contemporary and avant-garde art, important influences for their successors, and key representatives of performance and video art.
Joseph Beuys is arguably the most controversial performance artist from the second half of the 20th century. World War II left an indelible mark upon this artist: the suffering of other human beings and himself inspire his future work. His physical suffering was not insignificant, Beuys had his pancreas and kidney removed as well as suffered permanent leg injuries. As a German Air Force pilot, a Tatar rescued him from a snow bank after Russian shells hit his plane during an exercise, narrowly escaping death. His survival fueled his devotion to his artwork, and both his childhood and his rescue became subject matter for future pieces. His work features serious social concepts, and his work is internationally renowned. He has been featured in both Documenta and the Venice Beinnale, and his work is in the permanent collections of Tate Britain, New York Museum of Modern Art, Basel Museum of Contemporary Art, Hessen State Museum in Germany, as well as in many other major art galleries in Germany and around the world.
Sometimes referred to as the father of video art, Nam June Paik used black and white TV as early as the 1960s as a medium for his work. His early experiments and pieces set the stage for video art, new media work, and video installation, and becoming a key representative of the Fluxus group. His works span the cultural connection between the East and the West, cleverly mixing art, music, technology and popular culture. Though his work may be less legible in our very digital world, at the time, his avant-garde works were revolutionary. Nam-June Paik's Robot K-456 was a radio-controlled robot that could walk in the street surprising passers-by, and his prediction of an "electronic super-highway" foreshadowed the internet. His spirit of creative experimentation and research is still impressive today. He was awarded the "Order of Cultural Merit" by the Korean government, and his works are in the collections of Washington Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Museum of Art, the Hebe Museum, the North Rhine-Westphalia Collection of German Art, the Wiesbaden Museum, and at other well-known galleries.
The exhibition has three components, Joseph Beuys's work, Nam June Paik's Work, and their collaborative work. The show includes work such as Beuys's "How to Explain Pictures of a Dead Hare", Paik's "Zen for Head" and "Good Morning, Mr. Orwell", and his commemorative work "Beuys Vox", as well as Paik and Beuys final collaboration from 1984, "Coyote III".
The Shanghai HOW Art Museum opened its doors this past September after five years of preparation, becoming one of the first museums to have open visiting hours at night, called the Night Art Museum. The exhibition "Lettres du Voyant: Joseph Beuys x Nam June Paik" replaces the exhibition "Manifesto: Julian Rosefeldt" as the museum's second exhibition.
"Lettres du Voyant": Joseph Boyce × Pak Nam Jung
Exhibition Date: January 20, 2018 - May 13, 2018
Venue: Shanghai HOW Art Museum
Curators: Gregor Jansen, Kim Nam Soo
Figure 1: "Neon TV 22nd Century Fox" Nam June Paik 63x65x25cm 1990, Easy Rider, 1995 © HOW Art Museum
Top Two: "Neon TV 22nd Century Fox" Nam June Paik 63x65x25cm 1990, Easy Rider, 1995 © HOW Art Museum
Figure two Lower left: "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare (screen-shot)" Joseph Beuys 1965, Easy Rider, 1995 © HOW Art Museum
Upper right: "Blue Buddha" Nam June Paik 250x155x205cm 1992-1996, Easy Rider, 1995 © HOW Art Museum
Figure two Lower right: "Easy Rider" Nam June Paik 164x148x180cm 1995, Easy Rider, 1995 © HOW Art Museum
