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O.C. ART REVIEW : Back to Future of Video Guru : Korean-born Nam June Paik has a genius for merging high-tech and human nature. You can see it in his his sculptures at the Newport Harbor Art Museum till June 27.

May 25, 1993|CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT | TIMES ART CRITIC

The one, not insubstantial weakness in the programs is that their content is largely restricted to this formal function. The specific images Paik selects for synthesizing frequently catalogue appropriate visual associations for the sculpture (tourist views in "Paranature," for example). Yet, the specific images almost seem incidental, as if the program playing in one sculpture could be replaced with a program from any other, without serious effect.

You're simply meant to stare, lost in the totalizing space of electronic light.

The idea of electronic space, which is these sculptures' most intriguing quality, was first heralded in Paik's art 30 years ago. "TV Clock" is one important example. Space is traditionally a sculptor's principal material, and the newly emergent continuum between electronic time and electronic space is manifest in "TV Clock."

As always, Paik beckons forth the past as prologue to this work. The configuration of an open arc for the curving row of 24 pedestals and monitors does not mimic the closed circle of a modern mechanical clock. Instead, the arc recalls the placement of time's hours on the age-old device of a sundial.

The revolution for the present age is that the light of nature has been replaced as an ordering principle for our lives by the electronic light of TV. A profound, elegant and audacious sculpture, "TV Clock" coaxes out as much contemplative wonder as anything the artist has ever done.

* \o7 Newport Harbor Art Museum, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach, (714) 759-1122, through June 27. Closed Mondays.

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