LOS ANGELES, CA.- AndrewShire Gallery presents In Memory of Nam June Paik, a solo exhibition by Korean artist Lim Young Kyun whose black and white photographs offer a glimpse into the unique character of one of the most influential and treasured video artists of our time.

In the early 1980s, when Lim Young Kyun decided to make a portrait book of Western and Eastern artists, his first step was to create a schedule for taking photographs of Korean artists in New York. The first person Lim chose was the famous video artist Nam June Paik. Lim’s first black and white photographs of Paik were taken in 1983, nearly one year after the two artists met at the Whitney Museum. The photo session produced a portrait that was published in the New York Times “Art and Leisure” section on January 1st in 1984. The issue received much attention.

In Lim’s photographs (dated from 1983 to 2001), Nam June Paik’s sustained gaze seems to signal the passing of time while resurrecting memories of someone we have now lost on our journey. Lim’s disquieting composition of images reverberate Paik’s contributions made to art and culture in his own lifetime. Printed without any cropping, they are studied portraits wherein Paik as the subject seems to look out from the photographs to some point beyond us in the distance. Each _expression is held in preservation. But taken in currently fleeting real time, each one could be our own composite self-portrait in which the search for meaning is endlessly deterred.

Lim Young Kyun and Nam June Paik remained friends. Subsequently, Lim coordinated many of Paik’s gallery and museum installations as well as performances including the 1986 “Bye-Bye Kipling” which was played live through worldwide satellite on PBS Channel 13 in New York City. In 1988, Lim Young Kyun returned to Korea to take a university professorship even though Nam June had asked him to stay and work for him in New York.

Lim had an opportunity to return to New York for a year in 2000 on a Fulbright Scholarship then to teach at New York University. He is now a professor in the Department of Photography at Chung Ang University in Ansung, Korea.