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Nam June Paik «Buddha»
Nam June Paik, «Buddha», 1989
© Nam June Paik
 


 Nam June Paik
«Buddha»

«In the variant of Buddha shown here, Paik merges elements form [... previously] series: the juxtaposition found in the 1974 performance piece has become a single figure of a Buddha, that has Paik‘s own facial features. This Buddha/Paik figure is no longer looking at its own image or at some other video on the monitor screen, but contemplates a (now, by implication, sacred) ‹Candle TV›. Of more significance, however, is the fact that, in this Buddha, we no longer encounter the juxtaposition of two ‹ready-mades›, but one specially prepared sculptural figure, modelled by Paikl himself, adopting the sculptural weight of bronze found in his TV Rodin. Accordingly, Paik not only ‹becomes› the Buddha, he also exhibits his own work as a sculptor: he is himself the ‹TV Rodin› of the twentieth century. [...]
Combining Western technology and Eastern patterns of thought, Paik establishes a connection between Buddhist beliefs concerning the reincarnation of all living beings and the electronic reroduction of what is always the same.»

(source: Dieter Daniels in: Heinrich Klotz (ed.), Contemporary Art, exhib. cat., Museum for Contemporary Art/Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 1997, p. 204.)