An interesting exhibition now at the National Gallery of Art:

The exhibition is centered around Paik’s video sculpture One Candle, Candle Projection (1988-2000). Each morning a candle is lit and a video camera follows its progress, casting its flickering, magnified, processed image onto the walls in myriad projections. It is a central work in Paik’s oeuvre for its simultaneous embrace of media overload and Zen simplicity, participation and contemplation. By turns steady as a rock and flickering in the air currents stirred by visitors, the flame is stillness in motion, a paradox magnified by its reproduction on the walls.

Two other “closed-circuit” works share the same dramatically darkened main gallery: Standing Buddha with Outstretched Hand (2005), and Three Eggs (1975–1982). In the former, a bronze Buddha “watches” its own image. In the latter, a video camera fixed on an egg sends the image to a portable TV while an identical TV (minus its picture tube) presents an identical but real egg: the result is both a Platonic reflection on levels of reality and a closed-circuit image of time passing, or standing still.