What is it about?
This article examines the transformation of television into video sculpture from the 1960s to the 1990s, analyzing how CRT-based sculptural works were discursively and institutionally constituted within exhibition contexts in the United States, Germany, and Korea. Focusing on works by Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, Shigeko Kubota, and Franziska Megert, it positions video sculpture as a site where the ontological boundaries of sculpture were renegotiated in relation to electronic media.
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Why is it important?
This study foregrounds a series of historic exhibitions mounted at the Howard Wise Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, and Gallery Hyundai, among others. By mapping transnational exhibitionary networks that included Korea, it demonstrates how the Western concept of video sculpture was not simply imported but re-centered and rearticulated within the Korean context from the 1980s through the 1990s.
Perspectives
Stanley Abe’s research on sculpture has been a scholarly influence during my graduate years at Duke. Building on his analysis of how sculpture emerged in East Asia through encounters with Western art historical frameworks from the late nineteenth century onward, I extend his work within a broader postcolonial critique informed by postmodern perspectives on Western knowledge systems.
Dr Victoria Young Ji Lee (이영지)
State University of New York Korea
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: From Television to Video Sculpture: Discursive Constitution and Institutionalization through Global Networks, Journal of Korean Modern & Contemporary Art History, December 2025, Association of Korean Modern and Contemporary Art History,
DOI: 10.46834/jkmcah.2025.12.50.39.
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