Tate Modern is planning an exhibition featuring Korea‘s internationally acclaimed video artist Paik Nam-June next year.

Tate Modern will kick off its Paik Nam-June exhibition during the second half of next year, a local media report said Sunday, citing Tate director Maria Balshaw. The exhibition will later tour several cities in East Asia.

The exhibition will be curated by Lee Sook-kyung, Senior Research Curator at Tate Research Center and Curator of Tate‘s Asia Pacific Acquisitions Committee -- Tate‘s international art collection initiative. In 2010, Lee had also curated a retrospective exhibition introducing Paik’s works at Tate Liverpool Museum.


The latest Paik Nam-june exhibition is part of the London-based contemporary museum’s efforts to find artists and works of art that encompass widespread influences and connections around the globe,

During a public talk session between Tate director Maria Balshaw and MMCA director Bartomeu Mari on Sunday at MMCA Seoul under the title of “Museums of the Future,” Balshaw commented on the recent changes at Tate and its future focus. “The Asian research center is ending but not stopping. It is transforming into what it needs to be next, which is a transnational research center,” Balshow said. “For the next five years, our research focus will really be about exploring transnational connections,” Balshaw added.

Paik has been “hugely influential in North America and in Europe, pushing art practice there to embrace more a global and technologically informed view of the world,” Balshaw also said at Sunday‘s public talk.

“Paik was what we can consider the first global artist (from) Korea who moved first to Europe and engaged with a group of artists that made a very serious contribution to the development of contemporary art, namely the Fluxus movement,” said Mari.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)