Lot 530 D

Nam June Paik is still considered to be the 'father of video art'. His artistic career began with action music in the context of Fluxus, but in the 1960s turned to using television sets and the manipulation of television pictures. With the introduction of the first transportable video recorder in 1965, he began experimenting with video film and at the end of the 1960s, he designed a video synthesizer which enabled the controlled manipulation of the video picture. He didn't create the recordings for the installations himself, but used television extracts or other external material. As with the principle of recycling, he often re-used video material again and again.
One possible installation assembly of 'Temple guards' requires each of the sculptures to be stood on a television set and placed diagonally next to each other. The camera and the playback of the video of the sculpture have been crossed over; meaning the camera is pointing at the mouth of one sculpture and the resulting still-image recording is projected on the television set of the other sculpture. The second television screen plays a very rapidly cut sequence of images.
The 'Temple guards' were designed as a 'closed circuit' installation, suggesting that the camera is directly linked to the monitor creating a closed image situation. Often however an object or also the viewer is confronted with their own image. The common perception of reality and image are questioned by the closed circle of simultaneous recording and playback. One of Paik's most well known and frequently assembled 'Closed circuit' installations, also featuring a Buddha statue, is 'TV Buddha' from 1974. Here a Buddha sculpture is shown meditating before a television, which is projecting their own still image.
Paik's Korean background and the influence of the Zen-inspired composer John Cage are often seen in the Zen elements and Buddha sculptures present in his work, deliberately juxtaposing the contrasts of Eastern and Western thinking as well as antique and modern art. 'Temple guards' thereby discuss the antithesis of historical statues and abstract painting, of centuries old traditions and modern video technology, of meditational calm and rapid movement.