As the first exhibition of new space, Leeahn Gallery in Changwon presents a solo show of NamJune Paik for its six-week run from Friday, March 12 to Saturday, April 24. This exhibition highlights Paik as an individual who firmly established the video art as an artistic genre for the first time in the world. Over 30 plus works in diverse fields spanning his entire lifetime will be in display, from the installation work using early-day TV monitors; a cello performance with Charlotte Moorman, which is often referred as the representative of Paik's performances; installation work using giant monitor displays along with visual collage works.

Outline:
NamJune Paik (1932-2006) was born as a son of Nak-seung Paik, the head of Taechang Textiles, then the leading textile company of Korea, and started to learn music composition and piano since his youth. During his overseas days in Japan, Germany and USA, NamJune Paik was transformed from a musician to be reborn as a video artist. During the 1963 exhibition of <Exposition of Music-Electronic Television> at Galerie Parnass in Wuppertal, Germany, which turned out to be his very first individual exhibition that signaled the beginning of the video art, Paik produced and embodied the first-ever use of television in an art form with a piece entitled '‘TV monitors' to become the originator of video art form. Afterwards, his 1982 retrospective at Whitney Museum in New York City became an opportunity for his video art to be recognized as one of art genre in the world. In 2000, a large-scale retrospective on Paik's works took place at Guggenheim Museum in New York City, summarizing his art world that span half a century. In addition, efforts to newly shed the light and arrange his artistic world are actively taking place both domestically and internationally, including the opening of an art museum bearing his name in Gyeonggi Province, Korea on October 9, 2008, installation of archive on his works at Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., USA and 3 year-long world exhibition tour to recollect Paik's life and artistic journey to name a few. For its first exhibition of 2010, Leeahn Gallery is presenting this showcase to observe the 4th anniversary of his passing and to have an opportunity to newly face his artistic world from the regional perspective.

NamJune Paik's happenings and video art are the very concepts at the center of his artistic world, consistently encouraging the participations from the audience. Such is the core element that shapes Paik's video arts into art of communication and everyday life, in other words, bringing audiences to participate in his works and leading such happening to become mutually communicative art form. Video art is NamJune Paik's unique art form, which is the extension of above notion that he encourages participation from audiences.

NamJune Paik was a musician, a poet and an artist who consistently experimented and pursued the meeting and the unison of different kinds, such as the East and the West, art and music, moment and eternity, machine and human among others through his artworks. Even though he spent majority of his life in the West, his spirit has always been based on Eastern philosophy as expressed through his own temporal notion found in his video works. These works prompts the audiences to disregard the realistic temporal and spatial senses by deeply submerging into his endlessly pouring visual images and contemplate sense of time that he suggests instead. NamJune Paik's exhibition at Leeahn Gallery will be an invaluable opportunity to experience in person his artistic world of audience participation and the notion of communication that combines art and scientific technology, as well as the culture and the spirit from the East and the West.