Stony Brook University Faculty of Sciences and Humanities

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the emergence of video sculpture and the development of related discourses in connection with major exhibitions held in the United States, Germany, and Korea, and situates the institutionalization of video sculpture from the 1970s through the 1990s within global networks. Employing electronic image technologies such as cathode-ray tubes, portable video recorders, closed-circuit systems, and slide projectors, video sculpture took shape as an artistic form that both reflected and materialized shifts within postmodern art during the transitional moment from analog to digital media environments. As “sculpture,” video reconfigured the non-artistic status of television—long regarded as a household appliance or machine—by reframing it within the domain of fine art. This shift was enabled not only by avant-garde artists but also through collaborations with experimental galleries, internationally active critics, and curators, who introduced an expanded concept of sculpture to establish television as a “creative medium.” With the release of the Portapak in 1965, artists gained new autonomy and mobility, producing gallery-based works that, in Nam June Paik’s words, took the “environment” as their subject. From the 1970s through the 1980s and 1990s, video sculpture gradually gained institutional recognition across major museums and exhibition spaces—often within broader frameworks of video art—including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and Gallery Hyundai. Above all, the commercialization of color television in South Korea during the mid-to-late 1980s led to the formation of a media discourse by the mass media that differed from those in the United States and Germany; consequently, Nam June Paik’s video sculptures and installations were invoked at a national level as symbolic signifiers to showcase Korea’s cutting-edge technological prowess. From a global perspective, this study analyzes how video sculpture challenged the limits of traditional sculpture and expanded its scope through trans-genre artistic concepts. Focusing on the relationship between experimental artists, including Nam June Paik, and key historical exhibitions, the article reassesses the media-specific characteristics and arthistorical status of video sculpture, while highlighting how obsolete electronic devices function as residues of technological progress and time, embodying a dual temporality of generation and obsolescence.

For more details, you can read the full paper HERE.