This week’s Studio Sunday will take a look inside the multiple workspaces of Naim June Paik. Paik was born in Korea and moved to the United States as a young man to pursue his artistic career. The artist grew to fame in the 60’s and 70’s with his innovative work in the media of film, video and performance.

I love the look of Paik’s video editing studio in the above photo. The studio pictured here was in Paik’s home in Miami. It seems like Paik was working in a studio that was well equipped with the video technology of the eighties and nineties, with shelves full of tapes and the equipment and monitors for reading and playing around with their contents. I can’t help but wonder what his studio would have eventually looked like had the artist lived to see more recent technological advancements. Regardless, the aesthetic of this studio is interesting, as it seems rather more scientific or technical than many other art studios – though with many artists now moving into digital art, I wonder if more and more studios will start to take on the look of Paik’s.

The photo below paints quite a different picture of the environment in which Paik created his artworks. While his art often involved TV sets and video projections, it incorporated other sculptural and performative elements. Perhaps the studio pictured below is where Paik worked on these parts of a piece. It’s quite an interesting space – it almost seems as if several work desks are on display on a stage of some sort. I love the small addition of the pair of mounted antlers on the wall. They seem a little incongruous with the rest of the artist’s practice, and yet offer a glimpse into a sense of humour that was almost certainly present in his works.  

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