Television (ICA Edition), 1990

Private Collection, Toronto

Korean-American multimedia artist Nam June Paik pioneered the use of televisual electronic media in art. Known as the father of video art, he is credited with the first use (1974) of the term “electronic super highway” to describe the future of telecommunications. He imagined a world in which human beings near and far would be connected through radio waves and television broadcast channels—in many ways predicting the internet. Paik created numerous robots composed of television sets, produced a synthesizer that allowed him and others to manipulate electronic imagery in real-time, and made the first video collages with found imagery. He also developed large altars and architectural-scale installations of television monitors in the 1980s and 1990s. Television (ICA Edition) presents Paik’s quintessential subject of the television set, in a silkscreen image printed on canvas with applied plastic elements and an antenna. The imagery, though now associated with outdated technology, represents an era when audiovisual technology was beginning to develop rapidly, both in society and in fine art.