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Today, July 9, in the Library of the First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan - Elbasy, an exhibition of digital artworks by the Korean artist Lee Inam "Signal of Light" was opened. The vernissage took place in the futuristic space of a multifunctional hall equipped with modern LED screens.
The exhibition is organized within the framework of the international exhibition project of the Library of Elbasy "Dialogue through culture" together with the Korean Cultural Center of the Embassy of the Republic of Korea in the Republic of Kazakhstan in association with the Nursultan Nazarbayev Foundation.
The name of the exhibition is not accidental: "Signal of Light" implies attracting the viewer who is interested not only in a new visual language, but also in expanding the technical palette. Lee Inam's digital works allow the viewer to feel inside the created space, interacting with the work through video, sound, and movement.
Opening the event, Head of the Service for Registration and Storage of Museum Values of the Library of Elbasy Kulyaisha Aktayeva noted: "The exhibition is interesting primarily because it features the direction that has been actively developing over the past 20 years, which some call media art, others call digital art. But we, thanks to indirect communication with the author of this project, Mr. Lee Inam, and also deeply studying his work, we brought up the idea of striving to find common points of contact. The exhibition presents five paintings that are a clear attempt and desire of a person to stop, to think about tomorrow and about the opportunities that open up before him, despite any restrictions."
In turn, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Korea to the Republic of Kazakhstan Koo Hong-seok expressed hope that the exhibition, which opened in the capital of Kazakhstan in the year of the 30th anniversary of Independence, will be of special importance and will bring comfort to all lovers of contemporary art in the conditions of a global pandemic.
"The exhibition was organized to introduce you to the culture and beauty of Korea through the earliest and most recent works of the artist Lee Inam, continuing the legacy of the world-famous leading Korean media artist Baek Nam Joon. In today's exhibition, the artist Lee Inam, based on the works of Eastern traditional and Western contemporary artists, with the help of media art, vividly expressed stories created in the process of communication and fusion, overcoming the boundaries of East and West", the Ambassador said.
The coronavirus pandemic has irreversibly changed the world and the way we see it. Isolation made it impossible to meet with each other. These shocks have simultaneously become a space of new opportunities to communicate with each other, we turned to digital media.
The introduction of digital technologies is a priority direction of the state policy of Kazakhstan.
The First President of the Republic of Kazakhstan – Elbasy N. A. Nazarbayev on November 6, 2018, during the opening of the international technopark of IT startups "Astana Hub" in the city of Nur-Sultan, said: "The world is changing rapidly. The Internet of things, artificial intelligence, 3D printing technologies, blockchain have been active in all areas of human life, and this tends to develop rapidly. Digitalization has become one of the key factors in the development of the state's competitiveness."
On February 5 this year, Head of State, addressing the participants of the International Digital Forum in Almaty, requested that this year be marked by effective digitization. K. K. Tokayev noted that during the quarantine period, almost 6.5 million Kazakhstanis received state support through digital systems.
A national cluster of artificial intelligence is being created. Within 5 years, the state plans to attract about 500 billion tenge of investments to the digitalization industry.
Global challenges have caused revolutionary changes not only in the world economy, but also in art. This is confirmed by the exhibition of works of digital art by Lee Inam "Signal of Light", which clearly demonstrates that video art allows you to temporally expand the scope of fine art and at the same time presents the results of constant artistic searches of color, shape, light in space.
The author of the works gives the opportunity to change the view of the world, to form new channels for dialogue with history and masterpieces of great masters, which have been known to us since childhood.
The master takes as a basis another palette - a video, where viewers will be able to follow the development of media art from a magic lantern to cinema, from optical illusions and panoramic painting to virtual reality.
The plots of the videos unfold at a deliberately slow pace, allowing the viewer to look closely, to feel deeper and longer. And most importantly, these works, which represent the artist's deep vision of the eternal nature of human life, leave hope for the future.
About the author.
Lee Inam is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Visual Arts of Yonsei University. In 2017, he was the Goodwill Ambassador for Culture and Arts of the Korea Committee of UNESCO, in 2019 - the multimedia director of the opening ceremony of the International Symposium on Electronic Art, in 2021 - the art director of the video for Art Korea Broadcasting 2020.
Personal exhibitions of Lee Inam in different years were held in the United States and Europe. The author has won various awards in the field of media art.