When we talk about video art in Korea, the person that most often comes to mind is Paik Nam-june.
What many people don't know is that someone named Park Hyun-ki was actually Korea's first video artist.
He unfortunately passed away at a very early age, but his massive collection of over 20-thousand works is still with us.
Yim Yoon-hee has the story.

Where exactly does chaos meet order? The East meet the West?
Korea's first video artist Park Hyun-ki explored where the moving meets the still,... where seemingly polar opposites clash, but also where they coexist.
Video art was a new artistic medium, not just for Kim but also for the world.
And for Park, media became just a tool, a tool for an artist bent on finding the place where traditions of Korea could harmonize with the new Western world and where nature coincides with humanity.


"These artworks are on the foundation of nature, but also of Korean traditions. He wanted to find harmony with Western formal language in Korea. Things like rocks, trees and rivers, they can be found around the world, anywhere you go, and naturally for Park they became art that harmonizes with humanity."

And nature immediately became his focus, necessary to begin a piece,... he would have to go looking for his materials in the great outdoors.
The rocks gathered from nature would lead Park to works, like his video stone tower, a work that would become key pieces to the development of his career.
The rocks, taken from Mother Earth, surround cold, glass screens that project the same image as you would expect to see in nature.
Park blurs the line between reality and illusion in his low tech, unnaturally natural work.
But his inspiration from nature goes much deeper than the materials he used.
Park found a continuous cycle in life, and he conveyed that flow through his video art,... each screen capturing another step in this circuit.
He found this flowing, connected system in the cosmos and the world, but also in his own two hands.


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