Joint performances by Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys are some of the most important (Fluxus) events. Highlight was their concert on two pianos at the Duesseldorf Academy, organized by René Block in 1978. In the 1960s and 70s, René Block organized more performances by Joseph Beuys or Nam June Paik than anybody else.

In his lecture at the Nam June Paik Art Center, René Block will talk about some of Beuys’ and Paik’s most memorable performances, among them the legendary Beuys performance “I like America and America likes me”, which Joseph Beuys realized in 1974 in Block’s gallery in New York.

René Block opened a gallery in Berlin in 1964 at the age of 22. The gallery’s first exhibitions and performances were organized by then young artists such as Gerhard Richter. Sigmar Polke, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik among others. From 1982 to 1992, block went on to work for the DAAD Belin Artists Residence Program. From 1993 until 1995 he headed the program of the exhibition service at the Institute for Foreign Relations(IFA), which is responsible for the presentation of German art aborad. From 1997 to 2007 René Block was the director of the Kunsthalle Museum Fridericianum in Kassel.

René Block curated seminal Biennales, Sydney in 1990 and Istanbul in 1995, as well as important solo and group exhibitions around the world. Since 2008 he is the director of Edition Block in Berlin and Tanas project-space for Turkish art in Berlin.